There is a sour taste in people’s mouths and rip-off is what has come out of many people’s mouths when it has come to the fight between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. Yes, they could have sold 4 million to 5 million pay-per-view buys. Yes, the fight may gross enough money to buy a football team. But who else did it benefit but those involved?
ESPN’s Teddy Atlas was worried about such a situation and feels it did more harm than anything else.
“They let us down bad,” Atlas told ThaBoxingVoice. “I’ve been saying for the past two months when this fight was first put together. It’s healthy right now; it’s making boxing relative to speak about boxing the way these boxers deserved to be talked about. But there’ a flip side to that coin if they do not come close to living up to the hype.”
As a fan, I enjoyed the fight but many others didn’t. Atlas knew the danger of charging all that money for everything and many walking away unsatisfied.
“They’re telling the people to believe in us and pay this money you never paid before, pay this 100 dollars to see us fight,” Atlas said. “Pay ridiculous money that the regular fight fan can’t go to. They had to pay for a damn weigh-in, 10 dollar tickets that went to the secondary market for 100-400 dollars. After all, that you got to do better than that.
And in the long run Atlas felt the fight hurt the sport more than anything else.
“I said that that it didn’t live it up to it or far short; it was going to hurt the sport. As much as it was helping it leading up to the fight, it was going to hurt the sport because the fans were going to be angry, and the fans are going to say shame on you, you fooled us again and we’re not going to believe you again. There’s going to be some time before boxing can earn the trust for the public for such a fight.”
