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Bob Arum: Hey, we’re going to get 2 million PPV buys for Oscar De La Hoya vs. Manny Pacquiao
By Zach Arnold | December 5, 2008
When De La Hoya fought Floyd Mayweather last year, that fight did 2.4 million buys. Buys for this weekend’s fight in California are tracking at 90% of what estimates showed for De La Hoya-Mayweather.
“Will that hold for the country? It’s like an election. Who the hell knows?” Arum said. “But we know based on those early numbers and based on experience the event will perform extremely well. If I had to guess, anywhere between 1.6 million and two million homes, which is a home run.”
Mike Tyson recently paid a visit to see Manny Pacquiao in Las Vegas:
“Mike said we needed to be active with our head movements and just keep on attacking and attacking,” Fernandez said. “If we do that, if we keep Oscar close, we nullify his jab and his left hand. And that’s exactly what we’ve been training all these months.”
“It’s all sensible stuff,” Roach, who once trained Tyson, added. “He just said to be careful moving in straight lines because Oscar has the longer reach.”
“It’s something we’ve been working on,” Roach assured.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer reports that local government officials in Manila will set up giant screens for people to watch Pacquiao/De La Hoya for free.
Tim Smith of The New York Daily News quotes trainer Freddie Roach on the record about the flaws of De La Hoya as a fighter:
Roach believes that he has been able to get inside of De La Hoya’s head. But he doesn’t believe that is much of a problem.
“I think the problem he has in fights is all mental and not physical,” Roach said. “I’ve had sports psychologist who called me and wanted to help Oscar. He works hard in training, but the mental side is weak.
“He lacks confidence. He loses sight of the game plan.”
Roach believes that is why De La Hoya has a tendency to lose steam down the stretch and why he might have abandoned his jab in the fight against Mayweather. Roach trained De La Hoya for eight weeks.
Meanwhile, Pacquiao sparring partner Amir Khan will be fight on Saturday in London against Oisin Fagan.
“I’m a better fighter all round. I was taking shots off Manny and coming back with harder shots and giving him tough, tough sparring.
“The sparring over there was tougher than a fight and probably tougher than the fight I’m having on Saturday. I can’t wait to get in there and show what I’ve learnt in the last six to eight weeks.
Freddie Roach told The Sunday Mirror newspaper in the UK that he can see a fight happening between Khan and Ricky Hatton… and Khan winning that fight.
Related articles:
- The LA Times talks about betting on boxing and mixed martial arts
- More media heat-up for Oscar De La Hoya vs. Manny Pacquiao
- Media heat-up for Oscar De La Hoya vs. Manny Pacquiao
Topics: Boxing, Media, Zach Arnold | 13 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
I think it does between 1.25 and 1.5 Million PPV Buys.
ODLH/FMJ had a fantastic 24/7 show, which also benefitted from it being the first countdown show. That added on many buys.
What does this thing go for on PPV? $55 or so?
It showed up as $55 on my cable provider.
£15.99 over here in the UK
24/7 didn’t do a thing for me in convincing me to buy it. I’m buying this because Manny is a much more entertaining fighter than Floyd. 1.5 Million is a fail because every filipino family will get together and worship their hero tomorrow night.
HBO and Golden Boy have been saying 1.5 million, but it seems Arum is a bit more optimistic.
I think it will do very well. There’s some recent news from the movie industry suggesting that the counter-cyclical nature of entertainment is holding strong, with movie business doing surprisingly well during shitty economic times. I think it will apply here too.
What is the threshold of it being called a failure? Under 1 Million? Under 1.25 Million?
Funny, I would have thought that the measuring stick for a sporting event being a failure or not would be based on it’s entertainment value.
I mean, for me, it holds no interest whatsoever, but it’s kind of goofy to claim that it was a success or failure in strict business terms.
You’ve got a series of events, a brand, and the entertainment success of an event strengthens the brand going forward.
I’m pretty confident that Khan-Hatton will never happen, despite both of them wanting it.
It could have been on the cards until Khan got sparked by Prescott within a round but I don’t think many people in the UK believe he has a chance against Hatton.
Spot on, Iain.
I don’t care how good Khan may look in his next few fights as they attempt to rebound from the Prescott drubbing, it won’t change the fact that he’s absolutely chinny. And, no Freddie Roach or any other improvements that they make in his camp will alter that for the better.
And, I’m not just stating that off of the Prescott loss, but also a handful of other fights that I’ve seen where he’s been wobbled by opponents who were mediocre punchers at best. I happen to think that calling his chin glass may actually be over-stating it. IMO it may just be as fragile as fine bone china …
Maggie Hendricks has been making so many mistakes lately on Yahoo Sports it’s crazy. And she is supposed to be an MMA Expert? She said about Shogun Rua: “the jiu-jitsu phenom who hasn’t quite lived up to the expectations of his PRIDE career, but is still amazing to watch on the ground.” She wrote a whole article about how the WEC live show was going head to head with TUF because the WEC show was starting at 8 EST and TUF was starting at 9 EST, even though TUF was really starting at 10 EST. She wrote nothing about the Fitch thing other than to post a link to a funny video of Fitch from many months earlier. Those are just the major things. There have also been plenty of little things like she referred to TUF’s Episode 11 as Episode 10 in her headline and story and she referred to TUF’s Episode 12 as Episode 11 in her headline and story.
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