Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer revealed on Wednesday that the May 3rd Mayweather-Maidana fight card is the most expensive card in the history of the sport. It’s unknown if Schaefer was just talking up the fight card to make it seem bigger than it is or if he was dead serious.
Besides the headline fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Marcos Maidana, the undercard fights are as follows: Amir Khan vs. Luis Collazo in the chief support, Adrien Broner taking on Carlos Molina in light welterweight action, and super middleweight J’Leon Love fighting Marco Antonio Periban.
“This is the most expensive pay-per-view card to ever be put together in boxing history,” Schaefer said. “This is our sport’s version of the Super Bowl. I anticipate that any day we are going to announce a complete shutout.”
If this is the most expensive card in the history of the sport then I’m not sure Golden Boy Promotions got full value for the fights they have on it. If this was a pro football team, you’d have quarterback hogging salary cap with an inflated $20 million yearly salary, while the other players were mostly mediocre ones that the team could afford.
The Khan-Collazo fight is easily the most competitive match-up on the undercard on paper, but there are a lot of arguably better welterweights than Collazo that Golden Boy could have and should have matched Khan against for this card, such as Keith Thurman, Devon Alexander or Kell Brook. The Broner vs. Molina fight is another one that is heavily weighted in Broner’s favor, both with the money he’s receiving and in the talent department.
This undercard reminds me of a lot of the undercards you see in boxing cards staged in Germany. In a lot of those cards, you see 3-4 quality fighters on the card all involved in straight up mismatches against either obscure opposition with no chance at all of winning or against guys that are fringe contenders brought in as the opponents.
It’s good that Golden Boy were able to get Broner and Khan on the same card, but their fights leave a lot to be desired.
The Love-Periban fight is a decent one, but I doubt that the big money is going to either of them. It’s not a great fight either. I’d like to see Love fight someone better like Anthony Dirrell or James DeGale.
