Boxing legend Floyd Mayweather Jr. continued his retirement exhibition tour against former Bellator MMA fighter and “Geordie Shore” cast member Aaron Chalmers last weekend in London, but hardly anyone across the pond turned out to watch “Money” cruise to yet another ho-hum no-decision.
In fact, there were so many empty seats that promoters opted to slash ticket prices and delay the start time by 30 minutes in hopes that more fans would trickle in before the cameras started rolling. Mayweather blamed the empty seats on a short window to promote the fight, as well as a ticket snafu.
“We did this in one month — not even four weeks,” Mayweather said at the post-fight press conference (transcribed by talkSPORT). “I think the tickets should’ve went on sale a lot faster. My new team is still learning. I have got to take my hat off to them, it’s not their fault. It’s just when we fight in the US, as soon as we announce the fight, tickets are on sale. Here, we announced the fight and the tickets didn’t go on sale until a week or two weeks later.”
Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn called it a week before the fight.
“Where is it on? Thirty what? Somewhere between two and four thousand [PPV buys], if that,” Hearn told Boxing Social. “I don’t know anyone that even knows Floyd Mayweather is fighting on Saturday. Who is putting the money up for these events? Someone has hired out the O2 Arena thinking that they’re gonna sell out the O2 Arena with Floyd Mayweather and they’re going to do a couple hundred thousand buys on pay-per-view. It’s either going to get cancelled before Saturday, or someone is gonna do their absolute conkers, or people are not going to get paid. One of the three.”
Fans on social media called the Mayweather-Chalmers turnout “embarrassing.”
There was a time in the not-too-distant past when Mayweather was the biggest name in boxing and could command top dollar for a few minutes of light work. Whether or not this was simply a case of poor execution or the public’s indifference towards “Money” exhibition matches remains to be seen.