Arum: "We're hopefully finalizing today Miguel's next fight which will be, I think, the biggest fight of his career from the standpoint of pay-per-view buys and interest. And that will be on December 3 when he defends his title against Antonio Margarito. December 3, and it will either be in Madison Square Garden in New York or the MGM Grand in Las Vegas."
Nothing new here, but apparently ol' Bob forgot that Miguel Cotto fought Manny Pacquiao in 2009 and that fight did 1.25 million pay-per-view buys, which Cotto vs Margarito II won't even get remotely close to sniffing. The first Cotto vs Margarito fight did 450-500,000 buys, and that was when the matchup was not just some weird, controversial hero vs villain revenge story, which this one is, and also nobody thought either fighter was "washed up" at the time, which many feel now about Margarito, Cotto, or both. At the very least, everyone is quite certain they're both well past their peaks.
Will the rematch even do in the 450-500K range? Keep in mind that this is going to come on December 3, and get ready to open up your wallets this fall and early winter as we'll have Mayweather vs Ortiz (9/17), Hopkins vs Dawson (10/15), Pacquiao vs Marquez III (11/12), and Cotto vs Margarito II (12/3). I can't help but think that the slight upticks in boxing's popularity has once again driven the short-sighted, greedy promoters and networks into thinking, "Hells yeah! Let's put everything on pay-per-view again!"
HBO has a budget issue as their reason for sticking Hopkins vs Dawson on PPV, where the fight will probably flop instead of getting the 1.5 million or so viewers it would on HBO. And Cotto is reportedly going to make $5-7 million for the Margarito rematch, meaning that Arum has to be super confident that they're going to do well on pay-per-view.
But is this fight in 2011 that marketable? There is a loyal audience that is going to buy the show, period, but I'm not convinced it sells as well as the first one did, especially after three PPV events so close beforehand, and in the middle of the holiday shopping season, and all that.
You know what I'm asking for for Christmas this year thanks to this lineup? Someone to pay my cable bill.