Purists eager for fight following McGregor-Mayweather battle
LAS VEGAS — Look at any boxing website, and the comments will largely all be the same.
Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s fight with Conor McGregor is a joke, a spectacle that has little to do with real boxing. No reason to spend two cents on it, much less $100, when there’s a real super fight coming up a few weeks later between Gennady Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez.
The backlash is out there, even as the relentless hype switches into another gear. It’s one reason that plenty of tickets remain available a week before the fight, and entire rows of $150 closed-circuit seats remain available at hotels on the Las Vegas Strip.
Yes, the pay-per-view sales will be massive simply because of the freak show nature of the event. We love our reality TV, and it doesn’t get any more real than two colorful personalities who know how to talk the talk stepping into the unknown in a boxing ring.
It might even be somewhat competitive, if you believe UFC fans who don’t seem to get the concept that their man is a boxing novice going up against the master defensive fighter of his generation.
Boxing purists, though, may be saving their money for Golovkin and Alvarez.
“If you are one of those die-hard boxing fans you might be waiting for that one,” said StubHub spokesman Cameron Papp in analyzing the slow ticket sales — at least so far — in the secondary ticket market.
Golden Boy promoter Oscar De La Hoya certainly hopes so. He made the Sept. 16 GGG-Canelo fight at the same T-Mobile arena where Mayweather and McGregor will compete before that event became a reality.
De La Hoya — who helped make Mayweather a star when the two men fought in 2007 — blasted the McGregor bout as a farce when it was being negotiated and urged boxing fans not to buy it, saying “our sport might not ever recover.”
Indeed, there’s some evidence that boxing fans aren’t putting their money into what they see as a one-sided event, at least yet. Ticket prices are dropping quickly and the closed-circuit seats that sold out in one day for Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao are available in plentiful supply from the original sellers.
Meanwhile, host hotel MGM Grand has cut its room prices three times for the weekend, and there are hotel rooms readily available on the Las Vegas Strip for less than $200.
But promoters — and Showtime executives — believe there is enough excitement being generated that the pay-perview — even at a cost of $99.95 — could exceed the record of 4.6 million set by Mayweather-Pacquiao.