FLOYD MAYWEATHER recorded some of the lowest PPV numbers of his career in his showdown with Andre Berto. Reports suggest they could be as low as 400,000 and only as high as 550,000 in America. That is some way below the 4.4million that bought the Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao show in May.
“To a large extent, anything we did coming off of that massive May 2 event was going to feel like a bit of a letdown,” Showtime’s Stephen Espinoza told Yahoo’s Kevin Iole. “We didn’t have available a really compelling list of available opponents. There’s been a lot of speculation about a lot of things, but when you got down to it, there wasn’t really a long list of available guys and none of them were slam dunk established stories or really compelling storylines.”
Mayweather-Berto was only announced six weeks before their September 12 fight which is an unusually short period of time to promote a fight of this magnitude. It was rumoured that Showtime initially opposed Berto – who had done little to deserve the shot – as an opponent for Mayweather in his supposed final contest.
Even in the days and hours leading up to the contest, the kind of buzz associated with a Mayweather event could not be heard. And while Berto gave his all, Floyd largely dominating before claiming a unanimous decision was the result everyone expected.
What was curious, though, was the marketing of the fight in Sin City. The tagline on the posters was merely ‘High Stakes’ with no reference whatsoever to it being Mayweather’s final fight. A trick missed perhaps but ultimately this means that Floyd does not go out with the bang he would have wanted.
Some might say the whole disappointment makes a return to action even more likely than before.
DEMANDING ATTENTION: Observations from Mayweather’s final press conference
