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Media heat-up for Oscar De La Hoya vs. Manny Pacquiao
By Zach Arnold | December 3, 2008
We start with this article in The Wall Street Journal:
Mr. Roach, who stands to earn a million dollars for this fight, is so confident that Mr. De La Hoya will, as he put it, “be picking up a suitcase of blues on Saturday” that he has vowed to refuse his cut should Mr. Pacquiao go down in defeat.
The LA Times reports on Bob Arum allegedly getting scammed by someone who wanted a couple of hundred tickets for Saturday’s fight:
“They lied to me, and now they’re paying for it,” Arum said. “The economy went so south they’re lucky to sell them at face prices, and most are going at below face. That was wrong, and they’ve complained to me about losing money. I told ’em, ‘You win some, you lose some.’ ”
…
The bout was declared a sellout in less than two hours, but Arum revealed Pacquiao himself bought “$500,000 to $600,000” in tickets to distribute to friends, family and political figures in the Philippines, where he once unsuccessfully ran for a national office.
Nancy Gay in The San Francisco Chronicle asks if there will be empty seats at the MGM Grand Garden Arena for Saturday’s fight:
“Now, it’s true that some of the people who bought tickets were brokers,” Arum said. “And when the economy went bad, when the Wall Street people were out of work, (the ticket brokers) had trouble unloading them. But the tickets will be sold.
“The fact that they won’t be sold for two or three times their face value, well, that’s too bad.”
Scott Christ asks if the undercard for Saturday’s show will deliver:
Now as far as 2008 pay-per-view undercards go, this one is pretty much par for the course. It features some good young talent, but on paper they’re all in fights meant more to present them than push them competitively. Medina has a pretty record, but it’s a paper record. Resto is a mystery. And Lares is a tomato can.
Maybe the best thing you can say is that without some horrible misfortune, it won’t be able the touch the overpowering stink that was the Calzaghe-Jones undercard in November, and it should feature some good action. There’s a decent chance all three fights are very short, too, which could lead to some interesting production choices as we wait around for the main event.
The Sweet Science says that despite UFC 91 drawing a strong buyrate, there is still a sense of optimism about the future of boxing — outside of America:
There are television crews everywhere and languages being used that range from English to Spanish to French to German to Japanese to Tagalog, the most widely spoken language in Pacquiao’s native Phillipines. Boxing may be struggling in the U.S. but internationally it seems to have reached a high note, a point Pacquiao’s promoter, Bob Arum, made clear.
“Boxing is not as vibrant as it once was in the United States but it’s not out-rating soccer in Great Britain,’’ Arum said with a straight face. “It’s competing with the Bundesliga (Germany’s major soccer league). My hope is we can get boxing back where people can see it where it belongs – on free TV.’’
The LA Times reports, however, that De La Hoya is really going to extremes to try to keep a high PPV buyrate for Saturday’s fight in Las Vegas:
“We know it’s a tough economy, but it’s going to be a great, great fight,” Oscar De La Hoya said. “And if you buy yourself a 12-pack of Tecate, which you’re already going to do anyway, you can get 20 bucks off the [pay-per-view]. . . . ”
De La Hoya went on to tout rebates by a tequila company and an energy drink as a way to get pay-per-view discounts for his Saturday night fight against Manny Pacquiao at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. “You can practically watch the fight for free,” De La Hoya said.
Bob Arum, on the other hand, reportedly was not so smooth at the press conference on Wednesday.
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De la Hoya wears fishnets.