By Norm Frauenheim-
A couple of things didn’t happen during the last week, neither one much of a surprise and yet both significant for a sport that is either dying, or rebounding, or just going nowhere.
Item One: Nothing about Keith Thurman’s split decision over Danny Garcia last Saturday resembled Sugar Ray Leonard’s classic over Thomas Hearns in 1981. It was more like the Leonard-Hearns rematch in 1989. Don’t remember that draw? Neither does anybody else.
Item Two: Manny Pacquiao and Amir Khan announced a fight in the United Arab Emirates and then found out a promised $38-million was, well, fake news. The real story: There was no money, no fight at all.
What to make of it?
Bottom line, there is no more lotto at the end of a boxing rainbow that appeared like an illusion in 2015 when Floyd Mayweather Jr. collected between $220-and-$230 million for a dull bout that netted Pacquiao a reported $180 million.
Promoter Bob Arum, who warned Pacquiao about another UAE tease, told the Los Angeles Times that the Filipino and advisor Michael Koncz “were talking to the wrong people.’’
Truth is, there are no right people anywhere – not in the UAE, or Dubai, or Vegas, or New York — willing to invest $38 million in a boxing card these days.
The business is starting over, which might be bad news for Pacquiao, a Filipino Senator who is generous to a fault and always looking for a way to fund his next political campaign.
He needs the money. That’s no secret. If the Senator is entering his prime as a politician, however, he’s past his peak as a fighter. No secret there, either.
Pacquiao, who was guaranteed $4 million for a victory over Jessie Vargas in his last bout, is caught in a changing market. The irony is that he helped fuel the astonishing run-up of purses that climaxed with his loss to Mayweather.
Now, however, there are younger welterweights willing to fight for a fraction of the wages he and Mayweather earned.
That brings us back to Thurman and Garcia. Each had career-high guarantees of $2 million for a CBS fight that generated big ratings in prime time. The audience averaged 3.74 million over the 12 rounds and peaked at 5.1 million.
The fight itself is hard to judge in terms of whether it won over some disaffected fans. There were no knockdowns. Over the final three rounds, Thurman played it safe, staying out of harm’s way. The split scorecards say that was a risky tactic. But, in the end, it worked for him.
The bigger debate is about whether the bout was another turn-off for casual fans. The guess in this corner: It wasn’t. There was no pay-per-view, a fee that almost ensures outrage if it isn’t a classic.
The parallel to the first Leonard-Hearns bout was an impossible reach. But it was free. It didn’t cost anybody $100 for the right to get bored and then angry, all in high definition.
In part, that was always Al Haymon’s plan when he introduced Premier Boxing Champions a couple of years ago. He foresaw that pay-per-view was killing the business. His validation rests in the numbers for CBS’ primetime telecast.
Mayweather-Pacquiao set a pay-per-view record. At its peak, the 5.1 million for Thurman-Garcia was bigger than the 4.6 million PPV number for Mayweather-Pacquiao.
Under the old PPV model, Thurman and Garcia would still be invisible to casual fans. They aren’t now. They are introducing themselves to a bigger audience and doing it for price that might sustain the business as it finally moves into the post Mayweather-Pacquiao era.
