Mayweather vs. Pacquiao 2 will sell says Malignaggi

Boxingnews24.com

By Jeff Aranow: Floyd Mayweather Jr. announced last Saturday that he plans on coming out of retirement to return to the ring to face Manny Pacquiao in a rematch to give the Filipino a chance to avenge his loss from 2015. The big question is will the fans want to pay to see a fight that was incredibly poor between the two stars last time they fought each other in 2015?

While a legion of boxing fans see this as a dumb idea by Mayweather to setup a second fight with the 39-year-old Pacquiao that few if any boxing fans are calling for, Paulie Malignaggi sees the rematch as one that will be a success in terms of revenue.

The original idea was for Mayweather to fight Pacquiao in December, but that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen now that the Money man is talking of taking a tune-up first in Japan.

Even Mayweather isn’t foolish enough to assume that his rematch with Pacquiao will outdo the 4.6 million PPV buys the first fight took in three years ago, but he knows that enough fans out here wants to see the second that fight it’ll still rake in a massive amount of money without much risk.

For Mayweather to make similar money, he would need to risk his hide fighting a dangerous fighter like Saul Canelo Alvarez. Mayweather beat Canelo five years ago when he was a young kid at 22, bu he’s not going to find it easy pickings beating the fighter Alvarez has developed into. It’s safe to say that the 41-year-old Mayweather doesn’t want any of that work.

“It’s going to sell,” Malignaggi said to Fighthype about a rematch between Mayweather and Pacquiao. “It’s a fight that is going to sell. The casuals are going to buy everything, you know? At the end of the day, we’re going to watch the fight. I’ll probably watch it.”

Getting boxing fans to purchase the second Pacquiao vs. Mayweather fight is going to take a lot of selling. Pacquiao doesn’t have much charisma, and he no longer has trainer Freddie Roach to give a lot of interviews to help sell the fight like the last time he fought Mayweather in 2015. The first fight was so bad. The boxing fans that purchase the rematch will likely be newer fans that didn’t have the misfortune of paying $100 per household to see the first dull fight.

Mayweather wants a tune-up first before he faces Pacquiao. That seems kind of odd because Mayweather had made the aging Filipino star out to be an easy night’s work. If Pacquiao I really an easy mark, then a tune-up wouldn’t be necessary.

Mayweather will capture Pacquiao’s WBA welterweight title if he beats him in their rematch, which is being talked about for early 2019. Mayweather will be taking a tune-up first in Tokyo, Japan before he faces Pacquiao. If Mayweather does beat Pacquiao to claim the WBA ‘regular’ belt there will be a lot of pressure on him to face WBA Super World welterweight champion Keith Thurman. It’ll look strange if Mayweather doesn’t take the fight with Thurman, but I’m sure it won’t bother him that he’s being criticized if he ducks the fight. It’s already patently obvious that Mayweather wants no part of a prime elite level fighter at this point in his career.

“I know everybody heard about the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, but before the Mayweather-Pacquiao rematch I will be back in Tokyo for a huge boxing event. Stay tuned,” Mayweather said to TMZ.

Mayweather last fought in August of last year in defeating UFC star Conor McGregor by a 10

th round stoppage in a fight that brought in 4.4 million PPV buys. That was a ridiculously huge amount of buys for a fight that was always intended to be a mismatch. It was surprising that so many boxing and MMA fans chose to purchase the fight. Many of them were disappointed and vowed never to purchase another Mayweather fight.

The Mayweather-Pacquiao fight still hasn’t been negotiated yet, but Pacquiao wants the fight and that’s a good sign that it’ll happen.