Earlier this year, I told Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer that, if he could make Floyd Mayweather vs. Canelo Alvarez and Danny Garcia vs. Lucas Matthysse, I?d recommend to the MGM Grand that it book him as a replacement for David Copperfield.
Well, Schaefer has made both of those fights. And joined them on the same fight card.
The conventional wisdom in boxing has long been that the undercard doesn?t matter, that fans buy pay-per-view shows for the main event. Maybe that?s because, in recent years, PPV undercards have been excruciatingly poor.
Garcia-Matthysse is a great fight. It doesn?t come cheaply. Best estimates are that it will cost Golden Boy combined purses of between two and three million dollars. Will putting it on the undercard of Mayweather-Alvarez generate the extra 80,000 buys necessary to cover that number? Maybe not.
But ? and these are big buts ? matching Garcia and Matthysse on September 14th frees up the license fees that Showtime would otherwise have been called upon to spend had they fought on Showtime Championship Boxing this autumn. And Garcia-Matthysse will increase the value of the thousands of tickets that those involved with the promotion have retained for resale on the secondary market.
Meanwhile, the fight between Garcia and Matthysse (pictured above) will further energize the media and boxing fans who are awaiting September 14th. It makes the event bigger. And more important, it makes the event better. That?s not an illusion.
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SOME THOUGHTS ON BOXING
At one point in the early 1980s, Mike Tyson, Teddy Atlas, Kevin Rooney, and Cus D’Amato all lived in the same house. That must have been an interesting house.
At boxing press conferences, the people that the media don?t want to hear always seem to talk the longest.
Most marriages in boxing don?t come with ?for better and for worse, richer and poorer? attached to them
One needs at least a touch of cynicism to be a good boxing writer.
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Ahhh, the emails one does and doesn?t get ?
Dear Kind Sir,
I am friends with a nun in Nigeria who is very ill. She recently won 1,413,212 Euros in a lottery in Denmark and wishes to donate the full amount to charity. I am also friends with a barrister in London who is the executor of the estate of Nigel Throckmorton III. Mr. Throckmorton left his entire estate of 9,427,881 pounds sterling to charity but failed to specify which charities in his Last Will and Testament. Finally, I have been contacted by three United States servicemen in Iraq who have asked for assistance in transferring four hundred pounds of gold bullion to America.
Your name has been given to me as a person of integrity who would be willing to help with these tasks.
I would like to transfer the 1,413,212 Euros and 9,427,881 pounds sterling to your bank account in America immediately and have the four hundred pounds of gold bullion delivered to your home address. For your assistance in facilitating the gifts to charity, you will receive a commission of twenty percent. For your assistance in facilitating the transfer of the gold bullion, you will be allowed to keep eighty pounds of gold.
It is imperative that you send me the following information with regard to your bank account immediately: account holder name; bank name; branch name; bank key; swift code: account number; and the password to your account.
I will also need your home address so that the four hundred pounds of gold bullion can be delivered. Please advise me of the hours when you will be home during the next several days and also where in the home you keep your valuables. This latter information is necessary so that the four hundred pounds of gold bullion can be stored with your other valuables if you are not at home when it is delivered.
I am blessed to have found you.
Jose Sulaiman Chagnon
Thomas Hauser can be reached by email at [email protected]. His most recent book (Thomas Hauser on Sports: Remembering the Journey) was published by the University of Arkansas Press.
