Filipino boxing icon Manny Pacquiao has proven to the critics that he's indeed a crossover star. Despite a relatively unknown dance partner and an extremely short timeframe to promote the card, Pacquiao's WBO welterweight title defense against Joshua Clottey generated a stellar 700,000 pay-per-view buys and $35.3 million dollars in revenue. Both Top Rank Promotions and HBO Sports were pleased with the outcome of The Event, which saw nearly 51,000 fans show up in attendance.
"It is a testament to the popularity of Pacquiao and the vitality of the sport, and it gives us great encouragement as we look toward the May 1 Mayweather-Mosley pay-per-view fight," stated Mark Taffet, Senior Vice President of HBO PPV, in an interview with Dan Rafael of ESPN. The 700,000 buys were divided between 310,000 satellite homes, 350,000 cable homes and 40,000 telco homes. "Fights like this traditionally do not exceed 400,000 buys," Taffet added.
Although the numbers fell short of the 1.2 million buys Pacquiao did in his last bout against Miguel Cotto, the total is still impressive considering that Clottey ended up being a last minute replacement when negotiations with Floyd Mayweather Jr. fell through. HBO President Ross Greenburg was more than happy with the number, which exceeded expectations. Unsure of Pacquiao's own drawing power when he's not matched against a known adversary, Greenburg was expecting roughly 500,000 buys. "We didn't think Manny could carry the load to this degree. He's attracting more than just the hardcore boxing fan," he commented.