Bob Arum: Pacquiao-Bradley III lost money, terrible PPV numbers

According to Top Rank promoter Bob Arum, Pacquiao-Bradley III was an emphatic bust from an economic standpoint. The April 9th fight didn't perform nearly as well on PPV as Arum would've hoped, and he is very upfront about expressing his disappointment.

"It will be somewhere between those numbers, 400,000 and 500,000. It's all being added up, but it will be closer to 400,000 than 500,000. Terrible," Arum said.

What's worse is that some industry observers believe that Arum is even being generous in his estimations, stating that the fight may not even hit the 400,000 mark. Regardless of whether or not it did is of little consequence - with the main event alone costing $24M in fighter purses, the entire event ended in the red.

"Yes, it loses money," Arum said. "It was not one our big successes. It happens. We're big boys. Do I feel good about it? No."

Of course this news will be hardly surprising to our readers - there was absolutely no demand for the third fight between Pacquiao and Bradley and it received universal groans from fans upon its initial announcement. Arum, however, doesn't believe that the lackluster sales were due fans being tired of the match-up, he believes its due to backlash from Pacquiao's controversial comments about homosexuals combined with a lingering hangover from Mayweather-Pacquiao.

"Certainly the pushback from Manny's gay remarks killed us," Arum said. "It hurt us a lot. But I think it was also less a reaction to the match than a reaction to the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight. It was a reaction like Mayweather got. Mayweather also got punished [by consumers]."

Mayweather's supposed final fight against Andre Berto also did roughly 400,000 buys for Showtime's PPV. So if this is truly the end of the line for both Mayweather and Pacquiao, they both went out on commercial flops.