The number of pay-per-view (PPV) buys for the Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao boxing match, which took place earlier this month (May 2, 2015) inside MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, are expected to sail past three million and could go as high as five-six million.
A report that Chael Sonnen thinks is complete bullshit.
The retired Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) middleweight, who told Bloody Elbow he considered trying out for the 2000 Olympic team as a pugilist (seriously), is convinced the premature celebration over the MayPac numbers is nothing more than a dog-and-pony show.
His words:
"I think the number of pay-per-views they've sold is grossly embellished. I was watching FOX News, which is supposed to be a real news channel, and I respect them, but they advertised that Pacquiao's shorts alone were worth $250M. A quarter of a billion dollars! His six sponsors put up $40M per patch? Those are all publicly traded companies. If one CEO signed off on that he would not only be removed, but he would be placed in prison, and that's where his dumb ass would belong. The number of pay-per-views they did is great, but they're grossly lying about it. The pay-per-view was sold through public companies like DirecTV, we can check the goddamn numbers. You don't need to just believe they sold three-and-a-half million pay-per-views, cause they didn't."
The previous record is 2.48 million buys, held by "Mayweather vs. De La Hoya" in 2007.
That's assuming the "goddamn numbers" haven't been inflated for that fight, too. By comparison, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) doesn't release the number of PPV buys for each event, so we have to make rough estimates based on media reports and other "sources."
In the end, I guess none of it really matters to anyone except this guy.