Biggest in promo, media coverage

LAS VEGAS — The Manny Pacquiao vs. Sugar Shane Mosley WBO welterweight championship fight this Saturday (Sunday Philippine Time) at the MGM Grand Garden Arena is not only the biggest fight of the year so far but is also Pacquiao’s biggest in terms of ticket sales and media coverage, Top Rank publicist Lee Samuels told Cebu Daily News.

“They’re all cleaned up,”

Samuels, resting at the MGM media center after the jampacked Pacquiao-Mosley grand entrance yesterday, told CDN referring to the fight tickets which were sold out just three hours when sales opened last February.

“All the seats of the arena are taken,” Samuels said.

Aside from the arena tickets, close circuit tickets in hotels around Las Vegas are also selling like hot cakes.

Even members of Team Pacquiao are in a quandary on how to accommodate all the ticket requests from the star boxer’s ever growing circle of friends and supporters.

Politicians and celebrities who depended on Pacquiao for tickets, may end up canceling their trips or be content with viewing the fight on close circuit.

“There are 1,600 people on the list who will be given tickets (for free or otherwise) but we have only 1,000 tickets on hand,” a Pacquiao insider revealed.

MEDIA COVERAGE

“This is also the biggest media coverage ever for a Pacquiao fight,” Samuels added. “All the big media guys are here, even those who don’t usually cover boxing are here. We’re having a hard time accommodating everyone,” he added. “We have to reject more than 200 credential applications because there is not a space to accommodate them in the arena. This is even bigger than the Pacquiao-De la Hoya fight.”

The promotional success of the Pacquiao-Mosley battle, which was criticized by many boxing writers from its inception, could be attributed to several factors including introducing Pacquiao’s success story to a new audience via CBS TV network, Paquiao’s return to Las Vegas after more than a year of absence and Pacquiao’s growing number of Mexican fans who want to spend their Cinco de Mayo holidays in Las Vegas.

The effect of these factors to the success of the pay-per-view numbers though, is still an unknown variable in the equation.

However, Top Rank top honcho Bob Arum is confident of establishing a new PPV record for Pacquiao courtesy of CBS’ over a hundred million subscribers.

Pacquiao had logged more than a million PPV buys in three of his last four fights.