Floyd Mayweather Thinks Juan Manuel Marquez Has a Bigger Following Than Saul Alvarez

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Floyd Mayweather has had a history of fighting Mexican fighters in the same months that the big Mexican holidays fall on and on Sept. 14 it will be no different when he takes on WBC Super Welterweight Champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez.

This strategy has proven to be very profitable for Mayweather throughout his career as evidenced by the large amount of PPV buys for his fights in recent years, with the largest being his record breaking fight back on May 5, 2007 with Oscar De La Hoya.

Whether or not Alvarez is as big a star as De La Hoya was back in 2007 remains to be seen but nevertheless most people feel that he is the biggest Mexican star in boxing today.

Alvarez’ upcoming opponent on Sept 14 Floyd Mayweather disagrees. “I don’t really know who out of the Hispanic, Mexican, and Latino fighters has the biggest following but if I had to say so I would say probably Marquez because he has accomplished more, and he has done a lot for the sport of boxing, so I don’t think ‘Canelo’ has the bigger following. If I had to say so I would say Marquez,” Mayweather explained.

Following a two and a half year absence from the ring, Mayweather fought Marquez back on Sept. 19, 2009 in his first fight back. A lot of people were skeptical of how well the fight would do in terms of PPV sales. Many weren’t sure if it would achieve one million buys because of the fact that no title was on the line and Mayweather’s name was out of the sport for so long. A lot of people felt that Manny Pacquiao stole some of Mayweather’s thunder while he was away.

The fight ended up selling slightly over one million PPV buys and generated $52 million dollars in revenue which exceeded most people’s expectations.

It may be a little unfair to compare Mayweather’s upcoming fight with Alvarez to his fight against Marquez because the situation is quite a bit different now, but it seems like a foregone conclusion that this fight will do exceedingly better than the Marquez fight did.

It will be interesting see if Mayweather changes his opinion when the final numbers are tallied up and he receives his check for his fight with Alvarez.