By Bill Phanco: Last Saturday night’s mega fight on HBO pay per view between Juan Manuel Marquez (55-6-1, 40 KO’s0 and Manny Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO’s) reportedly generated a huge $10 million live gate at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada with 15,403 tickets sold and 908 comps. Needless to say this is very good money.
The PPV totals still haven’t been released they should be soon. This won’t be the case like in the Manny Pacquiao vs. Tim Bradley fight where we don’t hear anything for ages about the PPV totals and then end up hearing conflicting totals. I see the Pacquiao-Marquez 4 fight bringing in a respectable 1 million and above PPV buys. A rematch will likely bring monster numbers given how exciting this fight turned out to be.
Marquez knocked Pacquiao down twice in the fight, once in the 3rd, and a final time in the 6th, to get a stoppage victory in the 6th after he knocked Pacquiao fully unconscious with a highlight reel knockout. Pacquiao put Marquez down on the canvas in the 5th after stepping on his foot and then hitting him at the same time with a left hand.
The difference between Marquez’s two knockdowns and Pacquiao’s one knockdown were like night and day. Marquez actually hurt Pacquiao with his two knockdowns, whereas with Pacquiao’s knockdown it was more of a case of him stepping on the front foot of Marquez and hitting him at the same time. In other words, it really wasn’t what you’d call a legit knockdown.
Marquez did have problems with Pacquiao after Marquez was caught along the ropes in the 5th and was hit a flurry of shots. In the 6th, Marquez was bleeding from a cut above his nose he was starting to look beat up from Pacquiao’s fast shots. It didn’t look like Marquez would be able to go too much longer with the punishment he was taking.
Pacquiao had done all this damage in just in the 5th and 6th rounds, and there were still six more rounds to go. However, Marquez caught Pacquiao with a right hand when Pacquiao got a little carried away with himself while trying to inflict some damage in the last 10 seconds of the 6th.