MANILA, Philippines – Bob Arum called the recent fight between Manny Pacquiao and Brandon Rios in Macau a ?big success? even if early pay-per-view numbers show otherwise.
Reports coming out less than two weeks after the fight said Pacquiao?s return to the ring after nearly a year of absence did 550,000 tops on the pay-per-view chart.
There?s even talk stating numbers as low as 350,000 to 475,000.
Still, what?s certain is that Pacquiao?s last fight, which came after two successive losses to Tim Bradley and Juan Manuel Marquez, is his lowest over the last five years pay-per-view-wise.
Pacquiao?s second fight against Juan Manuel Marquez in March 2008 in Las Vegas sold around 400,000 hits.
Pacquiao did over a million hits in fights against Oscar dela Hoya (1.25 million), Miguel Cotto (1.25), Antonio Margarito (1.15), Shane Mosley (1.2) and Marquez 4 (1.15). Sportshub ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch: 1
The last time Pacquiao did less than a million hits was against Bradley with around 750,000.
Arum told ESPN.com that holding the Rios bout in Macau caused the dip in numbers for a Pacquiao fight.
?It?s very, very difficult when you?re not doing the fight in the United States,? Arum told ESPN.com.
?But the deal we structured with (the Venetian Macau, the host casino) was to make up for that. The [pay-per-view] industry told us when you do an event that far away you can expect to do maybe 30 percent of what you would ordinarily do on the fight,? he added.
Therefore, if it was 500,000 hits, Arum said it?s not bad at all.
?We did a lot better. We performed better than that (30 percent), so I think it was a big success. We had a huge audience on television in China,? he said.
Others believe it?s the fact that Pacquiao just lost two fights in a row and faced the prospects of retirement heading to the Rios fight.
Or the fact that Pacquiao, the only boxer in history to win world titles in eight different weight classes, is no longer the fighter he used to be even if he proved against Rios that he still is.
But he hasn?t knocked out any of his opponents since Cotto in 2009 and Pacquiao showing too much ?compassion? against his opponents may have turned some of his fans away.
Arum said Pacquiao?s next fight will take place April 12 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The opponent will be named in a couple of weeks.
Arum is looking at Marquez, Bradley and Russian Ruslan Provodnikov as the next opponent for Pacquiao, and should hope for higher PPV numbers.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. is not on the list because the undefeated American is scheduled to fight on May 3 ? perhaps against Amir Khan.
Mayweather is the current pound-for-pound champion and pay-per-view king. His last fight against Canelo Alvarez booked 2.2 million PPV buys and a record revenue of P150 million.
?The numbers are coming in like we expected. There was a little delay because of Thanksgiving, but it will be somewhere in the area of 500,000 buys.
?We ran all our numbers on something a little less than 500,000 but figuring we?d do around 500,000, and that?s what we?re going to wind up doing. It means 490,000 or 510,000, something like that,? Arum also told ESPN.com.
