Low attendance at Cowboys Stadium throw cold water on Bob Arum’s projections
Pacquiao and Margarita’s fight was entitled as “Fight of the year”. It was predicted that for first time in six months, boxing would finally receive a much-needed shot in the arm as Manny Pacquiao takes on Antonio Margarito at Cowboys Stadium.
When the much-awaited clash of the fighters took place it looked like Bob Arum’s projections of the Manny Pacquiao vs. Antonio Margarito bout drawing 60,000 to 70,000 fans were a bit short at the Cowboys Stadium, in Arlington, Texas.
The attendance was a point of concern for Arum because it was not a matter of 2 to 3 thousand, it was a huge difference of 18,266 than what had been predicted.
Instead of drawing those impressive figures, the fight only brought in 41,734, which are 10,000 less than Pacquiao’s fight against the obscure fighter Joshua Clottey last March.
This is bad news because Arum was so sure that he had made the right move in choosing the disgraced Margarito as Pacquiao’s opponent rather than a safer bet against the arguably much more popular but difficult Juan Manuel Marquez or Shane Mosley.
We still do not know what the pay-per-view numbers are, but if the attendance figures are any indication of what boxing fans thought of this fight, it is likely to come in far less than the 700,000 that Pacquiao did for his fight with Clottey in March.
Those numbers were a huge drop for Pacquiao and Arum from Manny’s fight with Miguel Cotto, which drew over 1 million buys. This shows that Pacquiao is getting fewer and fewer numbers because boxing fans do not want to see back-to-back fights against overmatched
opponents and less than popular fighters like Margarito.
Arum was counting on Margarito getting a huge Mexican following to come to the fight at the Cowboy Stadium, even though Margarito is not a big star in Mexico or the United States.
The fight simply did not make sense, as Arum seemed to be gambling rather than using real logic in choosing one of his own stable fighters Margarito to fight Pacquiao instead of a much bigger and dangerous opponent. Of course, Pacquiao was able to win the
fight and maybe that is all that matters to Arum.
Pacquiao would probably have lost to Sergio Martinez or Paul Williams. Moreover, with Marquez and Mosley, you cannot really say how Pacquiao would do in those fights. We do know that Mosley easily beat Margarito last year in a 9th round stoppage and looked
a lot better than Pacquiao did in beating him.
The numbers for Pacquiao-Margarito have to be disappointing for Arum. If Clottey-Pacquiao did 50,000 with many of them being complimentary ticket giveaways, having a mere 41,000 is indication that fans are pulling back instead of growing.
If we were the promoter for Pacquiao, we would not have matched him up with Margarito. We see that fight as a mistake, because it did not draw interest from fans.
Poor Arum, both of your predictions proved to be wrong. First that Margarito was going to give Pacquiao a tough time in the boxing ring while Pacquiao cemented his place in the pantheon of boxing greats by recording a unanimous points victory. Secondly,
a huge crowd of minimum 60,000 was expected, but that ended up at 41,734 attendances only.
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