Pacquiao vs Bradley: Heat-Celtics Game 7 Going Head-to-Head With PPV

In light of the Miami Heat winning game six of the Eastern Conference finals tonight against the Boston Celtics, the two powerhouse NBA teams will play a game seven on Saturday night, and will be going head-to-head with the Pacquaio vs Bradley pay-per-view.

This is something a few folks had worried about this week, as it could potentially impact the pay-per-view sales. Heat-Celtics is a legitimate big sporting event, and though the boxing/basketball audience doesn't exactly have huge crossover numbers, I don't suspect, a lot of the people who buy boxing PPVs are casual boxing fans who mostly pay attention to the big fights. I honestly believe this is a major reason that some people seem to think there's some enormous amount of PPV boxing, when really there isn't that much -- they only know about the PPVs, and don't watch all those HBO or SHO or whatever else fights.

Anyway, George Wills says on Twitter that the main event, which is the only reason most people buy a PPV to begin with, will not start until the Heat-Celtics game has concluded. This probably isn't going to be any kind of issue, anyway. The basketball game starts at 8:30 EDT, a half hour before the PPV kicks off from Las Vegas. There will be three undercard fights, and main event fighters generally don't get their bout underway until Midnight EDT anyway.

If there's double overtime or something, maybe it becomes a factor. If that does happen, I have my doubts Top Rank or HBO are willing to wait too long regardless. PPV feeds have limited time slots, too. They don't want to risk losing their broadcast time in round 11 of the main event. That's when you have to start doling out refunds and the like, and nobody wants to do that.

Most likely there won't be an issue, but it has been given consideration by promoter Bob Arum, in case anyone was wondering.