Breaking news: Floyd Mayweather enjoys making money. He also loves boasting about it.
The boxing superstar was guaranteed a cool $32 million for what turned out to be 36 minutes of work inside the ring against Marcos Maidana last weekend in Las Vegas. However, Mayweather is hoping that $32 million will look more like $70 million at the end of the day.
The unbeaten 37-year-old sent out the following tweet and Instagram message regarding his earnings.
Not so fast, Floyd.
According to Kurt Badenhausen of Forbes, the chances Mayweather earns $70 million for his majority decision win over Maidana are extremely thin.
Mayweather earned a total of $80 million (his purse plus his pay-per-view cut) for his bout against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez last September, but that event drew approximately 2.2 million PPV buys, which resulted in a record PPV revenue of $150 million. The bout with Maidana isn’t expected to come close to those numbers.
The Forbes report suggests that if the Maidana fight generated one million PPV buys there would be approximately $34 million to disperse after the cable providers got their cut; if the fight did 1.5 million PPV buys there would be $50 million to divvy up between Mayweather, Maidana and the promoters. Long story short, Mayweather, who improved to 46-0 as a pro, will earn a significant bonus on top of his $32 million, but likely won’t hit the $70-million mark he desires.
Mayweather’s last two wins have been by majority decision despite most people feeling the results should have been unanimous. Judge Michael Pernick scored Mayweather-Maidana 114-114, while judges Dave Moretti and Burt A. Clements had it 116-112 and 117-111, respectively, for Mayweather.
After the fight, Maidana said he felt he won and that Mayweather “didn’t fight like a man.”
This has led to some discussion of a possible rematch, to which Mayweather responded: “If the fans want to see it again, let’s do it again.”