Mayweather vs Guerrero buys will come in over one million, says Schaefer

Despite rumblings earlier this week that Mayweather vs Guerrero had done "well under" one million buys on pay-per-view, Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer says the fight will come in a little over a million buys.

Taking out his raging against the machine, Schaefer's belief is that the fight underperformed in the Hispanic market, but did better with the "general" market than expected.

"If you look at the DirecTV and the Dish, which are heavy in the Hispanic market - in the Hispanic market the fight underperformed and in the general market the fight over-performed. It is amazing. It's not just on the pay-per-view,. but the general market really carried this fight. Somehow the Hispanic market didn't really identify with Robert or Robert didn't identify with the Hispanic market. It underperformed there. This is not just a case with the pay-per-view. We saw exactly the same [trend] in the closed circuit as well, where it underperformed with the Hispanic market and over-performed with the general market," Schaefer said.

"The same was true with the movie theaters. The movie theaters set a new record for all of the tickets sold. It was higher than the [Mayweather-Cotto] fight, and again it was heavily generated by the general market and light in the Hispanic market. Really interesting trends and it was really interesting because for the first time in two or three fights - Canelo was not on the card [with Mayweather] and Canelo obviously has a huge recognition in the Hispanic market."

The numbers talk from earlier in the week did come from DirecTV and Dish Network, so it may indeed be a totally viable explanation. Reporters are able to make projections based on early numbers and past performances from those projections, which has been done many times over now, and if Mr. Schaefer would like a fucking ABC on how projections work, blah blah blah, and so on.

He doesn't, obviously. But it needs to be understood that people didn't just make up numbers to slander poor, helpless lil' Golden Boy & Showtime. They were projections based on viable information, and if Schaefer's new calculations and collection process are correct, and this fight does 1-1.1 million on pay-per-view, then first off, congratulations on a pretty poorly-performing Mayweather PPV, his lowest since the Marquez fight in 2009. Ha! See how that works? You can still find flaws! It's SO EASY! And congrats, too, on being able to spin a pretty poorly-performing Mayweather PPV into a big success, because it did better than early rumors, and was not a disaster.

Ha! SEE how easy it is? Do you see?!?!?

But if I'm being real and not just farting around, as I am here, for anyone who may be a little slow on the uptake, Mayweather-Guerrero was always going to be a struggle to sell, and there's really no doubt that the promotion just wasn't hot. I don't know, it never took off. If this fight did as well as Schaefer says, that's a big credit to Mayweather's name appeal, because Robert Guerrero did not help at all. Not that he didn't try, but it just appears the public didn't buy into him. That's not Robert's fault, that's just something that can happen.

Would the PPV performing at this rate be a bit of a letdown for Golden Boy and Showtime and Floyd, no matter what they say? Yes, but that doesn't mean it's a critical failure that's going to kill the whole "experiment." It means they've learned something over this process, most likely. They might need a more compelling opponent next time out, or risk some of these "general market" folks who picked up on this one -- the "Lakers crowd," as Richard describes it -- not coming back for the next one.

In other words, I don't think you can get away with, say, Floyd Mayweather vs Devon Alexander next. That might be pushing it. Maybe you don't need to rush right into Canelo Alvarez, but it has to be someone bringing more to the table than Guerrero did this time, and an Alexander sort of fighter is not that guy.

And it does sound like the fight did well apart from the PPV -- again not that it did badly on PPV, if the new projection is the right projection -- so if this is all square and true, then I doubt anyone's losing sleep. It will simply be interesting to see what the next step is from this fight.