With only two days remaining until this weekend’s (Sat., August 26, 2017) massive Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor boxing match from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nev., the question isn’t if the ‘Money Fight’ will be huge or not, but exactly how massive.
The benchmark has been set at a lofty end goal of five million pay-per-view (PPV) buys, a hugely profitable number that may or may not be tough to attain considering the event’s $100 price tag. The buildup to the once-in-a-lifetime spectacle has also been hit or miss, because while the fight will certainly get a huge amount of views, there have been ups and downs in the promotion of the fight, and live ticket sales certainly didn’t go as well as was hoped.
There’s at least one man who believes the bout can reach heights like these, however, and that’s the megafight’s color commentator Al Bernstein. The longtime SHOWTIME Sports commentator offered that opinion during a special edition of The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani yesterday, declaring that he views Mayweather vs. McGregor as bigger than Mayweather vs. Pacquiao:
“My first thought was that it would be something of a spectacle, and guess what, that’s exactly what it is. . . I think the amount of attention that’s being paid to it, the amount of energy concentrated on it is actually more than I even thought it was going to be and, to be honest, even more than for Pacquiao-Mayweather.”
Based on that comparison, Bernstein believes Mayweather vs. McGregor will indeed surpass Mayweather vs. Pacquiao’s 4.6 million buy rate and even surge to the insane five-million buy mark, a number it is currently a two-to-one favorite to reach in sports books. If it does, he said, that will obviously be based on the sheer scope and hype of the event, not the legitimacy of the fight taking place:
“I do. The hardcore boxing fan will say, ‘Oh he’s equating it!’ and I’m not equating it in the ring necessarily but just the sheer amount of attention it’s getting. Quantitatively – this isn’t a scientific way of looking at it – my phone’s blowing up more than it did for Mayweather-Pacquiao. I have a friend who’s not even a sports fan, he doesn’t even watch the Super Bowl, and he’s buying this fight.”
Finally, Bernstein put the somewhat odd booking of an undefeated boxing great versus an MMA champ with no boxing bouts on his record in perspective, deeming it pure spectacle that wasn’t truly worthy of putting a 50-0 mark on “Money’s” current 49-0 record. In his mind, the over-the-top fight doesn’t diminish boxing nor MMA on its own merit:
“I see it as a one-off, so I’m not worried about the 50-0. I don’t even consider this. If you’re going for a record, you don’t fight a guy that’s 0-0 if the record is the idea. . . This is a one-off. This is a specific event that you can look at on its own and decide if you think it merits your attention or doesn’t merit your attention and look at it that way.
“Boxing’s had one of its best years in 2017 so my feeling is this doesn’t diminish boxing, it doesn’t diminish MMA. It’s a one-off event.”
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