By Rob Smith: It’s being reported that the Manny Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO’s) vs. Juan Manuel Marquez (55-6-1, 40 KO’s) 5th fight for 2013 may be headed to the Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas rather than Las Vegas, Nevada, where it’s taken place in four of the previous bouts between the two fighters.
Marquez, 39, has wanted to fight outside of Las Vegas since he suffered a controversial decision in his third fight with Pacquiao last year in November. He’ll now no doubt be quite pleased if he can get the fifth fight with Pacquiao to be staged at the Cowboys Stadium because there’s a large Mexican community in the area and they would likely show up in high numbers to purchase tickets.
Pacquiao has already fought twice in the Cowboys Stadium against Joshua Clottey and Antonio Margarito. Both fights drew over 40,000 fans. If those two were able to bring in those kinds of numbers of fans, then a fight between Marquez and Pacquiao could bring as much as 60,000 fans.
I don’t this is a big enough fight to sell out the entire 80,000 seat Cowboys Stadium, but I think they could get within 20,000. They might have to give away a lot of tickets but they could fill the Cowboys Stadium up in a 5th Pacquiao-Marquez fight.
In other news, the pay per view totals for the Pacquiao-Marquez 4 fight is a reported 1.15 million buys and counting, according to the Manila Bulletin. It’s still being tallied but the number at the moment is 1.15 million PPV buys.
Now whether those are true numbers are not is a whole different matter.
I’m kind of skeptical about PPV totals unless it’s being released by HBO or Showtime. When I hear promoters are fighters talking about totals, I don’t buy it. However, I think the Pacquiao-Marquez 4 fight will likely bring in around 1 million buys give or take a few hundred thousand, but we’ll have to see what these numbers come up to.