Pacquiao vs Khan being moved to May 19

Manny Pacquiao will be fighting Amir Khan, it appears, and the fight has been moved from late-April to mid-May, as Pacquiao adviser Michael Koncz told Yahoo! Sports that they’re hoping to be able to promote the fight better and give it more time to sell.

The bout will take place in either Dubai or Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, on May 19 U.S. time.

“We decided to move it to May 19 here and May 20 in the United [Arab] Emirates so we’d have time to promote it properly and make it a huge success. I have to talk to both fighters [on Wednesday] to get them to approve going in May instead of in April. I don’t think that will be any problem.”

One problem with this strategy could be that instead of having first crack at the pay-per-view market, ahead of Canelo-Chavez on May 6, they’ll now be trying to follow a fight that is expected to sell well on pay-per-view.

The hope, of course, is that both fights will do well, and that both are intriguing enough for whatever reason that fight fans will shell out money on both May 6 and then 13 days later on May 19. But this might be a big ask of boxing fans, and grouping pay-per-views closely like this usually doesn’t turn out so well for at least one fight.

This also means that instead of the traditional Saturday night pay-per-view outing, Pacquiao-Khan would run on Friday night, which could also hamper sales.

In short, there are a lot of risks being taken here, business-wise, but it’s also unclear how much pay-per-view sales really mean to this fight. The money is there in the UAE and it’s guaranteed for the fighters, as far as I know, and pay-per-view in the States (and United Kingdom) may simply be the cherry on top in this particular situation.