Mayweather vs. Marquez: Does Anyone Care?

Floyd Mayweather Jr. considers himself the number #1 fighter in boxing, even after two years away from the sport. He feels that he should still be considered tops despite not having thrown a punch in two years. It seems as if it doesn’t register with him that when a fighter has been out of action they are no longer considered to be the top fighter in the sport. On September 19th, Mayweather will be facing Juan Manuel Marquez at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Few people really care to see this fight and it looks as if Mayweather shot himself in the foot by choosing Marquez rather than Manny Pacquiao, who the boxing public wanted Mayweather to fight. Sure, it would have been a risk for Mayweather to take the fight without having fought a warm up bout or two, but after all, if Mayweather is really the number #1 fighter in boxing, he should have been able to handle a fighter like Pacquiao easily, tune-up or not.
Mayweather says that Marquez called him out, which is why he chose to fight him. That’s pretty hilarious because Mayweather is always being called out and he never takes a fight with anyone unless he himself wants the bout. Mayweather’s estimation of his own popularity with the boxing public appears to be a tad off.

He probably thought the boxing public would want to see him fight Marquez regardless, and would scoop up tickets by the handfuls for the fight to see Mayweather mix it up with an opponent who fights two divisions below him at lightweight.

Mayweather could have fought Miguel Cotto and Shane Mosley, two of the best welterweights in the division and the fight would likely be much more popular than his bout with Marquez is turning out to be.

Of course, Mosley and Cotto wouldn’t be able to bring in anywhere close to the kind of numbers that a fight with Pacquiao would, but they would still be a good substitute for Mayweather. Both Mosley and Cotto were probably deemed to be too dangerous for Mayweather to fight, hence he chose for the much smaller Marquez to fight.

The lower risk for Mayweather has had negative side effects with boxing fans, because with the Marquez-Mayweather fight less than a month away, the fight is barely being talked about on the net. HBO is going to try and sell it with their 24/7 Mayweather-Marquez series that begins on August 29th, but it’s unknown whether that will excite too many people into wanting to purchase the expensive $49.95 card.

It’s going to take a lot of advertising to sell this bout to the boxing public in this kind of economy. The reason is because most people already know who’s going to win. It’s not always interesting to watch Mayweather fight in the first place because of his safety first style of fighting, but then when you mix in an opponent that is much smaller than him like Marquez, it’s kind of a put off. Who wants to pay to see a fight where you know that Mayweather is going to win? That’s not even interesting to me.

There’s got to be some suspense and sadly, it’s missing with this fight. I predict that this fight won’t do well with pay-per-view sales. I hope this is a lesson to Mayweather that when he fights, he can’t just push any opponent on the boxing public and expect them to blindly buy the tickets to watch it.