To Jas Mathur and the other key negotiators involved in bringing the Floyd Mayweather Jnr-Manny Pacquiao September 19 rematch to reality at the Las Vegas Sphere on Netflix, talk of the fighters’ ages went effectively muted.
“Those [decrying] that will be the first ones to watch it,” Mathur, the CEO of Manny Pacquiao Promotions, told BoxingScene Tuesday following the formal announcement of part two of the modest lucrative prizefight in history.
As lucrative as was their first meeting - still the richest event in boxing history - Mathur said it’s possible that the 50-0 Mayweather, 49, and Pacquiao, 47, will make more than the combined $450 million-plus they gained while far closer to their marketing peaks.
Their rematch will come more than 11 years after their May 2015 showdown, won by Mayweather via unanimous decision though in a fight largely criticized for its lack of action. The outcome - aside from preserving Mayweather’s undefeated record - was an afterthought to the enormous and record-breaking amount of revenue it generated. PPV sales alone were in excess of $600 million.
“Break records again, do the dance one more time, raise the bar so high that no one can ever touch or grab it,” Mathur said of the fighters’ shared mentality.
Their PPV record is obviously safe, since this event will come with your Netflix subscription.
The new mark that Mayweather, 50-0 (27 KOs) and Pacquiao, 62-8-3 (39 KOs) hope to conquer as they set out to break the record 108 million streams that Mike Tyson versus Jake Paul accomplished on Netflix in 2024.
The streaming giant boasts 325 million global subscribers and with nearly seven months of marketing time – with each fighter currently pursuing an April exhibition (Pacquiao versus former Wild Card Boxing Club stablemate Ruslan Provodnikov and Mayweather versus Tyson) – the possibility of similar riches as the first fight exists, Mathur said.
When Netflix expressed its interest in the bout in August, the event moved substantially closer to reality, he said.
Netflix Vice President of Sports Gabe Spitzer and Ian Orefice of EverWonder Studio played key roles in moving the rematch forward, said Mathur.
“We are in an era of streaming, not pay-per-view… the success that Mike Tyson-Jake Paul and Terence Crawford-Canelo Alvarez have had – Floyd and Manny saw that,” he said. “The fact that Manny returned and performed so well with the fact of Floyd being competitive, feeling that he can step back into the ring and be better.
“Both of the guys are at the stage now [where] they can bang it out and build an empire above and beyond the global empires they already have. Knowing ‘we broke records once, we’re going to come back and do it one more time because we’re the two greatest of all time, we can smash this on Netflix,’ made it all comfortable.”
There are guaranteed purses for each and the possibility of “back-end earnings” should the number of streams break records.
“This is more than all the other fights they’ve done – with the Sphere, the marketing, this is their big one,” Mathur said.
Asked what best sells the fight, Mathur said, “The legacy, who they are. These two can take out guys in their prime today. They’re still in their prime. They both age backwards. They’re animals. Their level of training is super-human, on another level. Both very clean living. Very driven. Very disciplined. Very competitive. Many guys today are into the noise and nonsense. Not these two. They get down to business and know what they have to do.”
Pacquiao told BoxingScene Tuesday that he assesses his standing as an eight-division champion who has been a boxing champion in four decades is a greater accomplishment than Mayweather’s 50-0.
If Mayweather can defeat Pacquiao again after doing so by unanimous-decision scores of 116-112, 116-112, 118-110 in a bout marred by Pacquiao’s torn right rotator cuff and Mayweather’s habitual evasive tactics, then that’s a GOAT-worthy feat, Pacquiao said.
If Pacquiao deals Mayweather his first defeat atop his other record feats, he’s the GOAT, he said.
Will Pacquiao’s recent impressive showing in posting a draw versus then-WBC welterweight champion Mario Barrios in July give him a leg up?
“The true winner is the fans. Getting to see something they’ve wanted to see for so long: Two of the all-time great boxers performing on a stage with that magnitude on Netflix … everyone’s going to win,” Mathur said.
“History is going to be made again. The bar is going to be raised because the production value is second to none. We’re going to beat the [Tyson-Paul] numbers because of their global reach.”
Age be damned, he hopes.
“Most people, as they get older, diminish.These guys, because of the way they live, have got better. It’s not even explainable. I think it’s going to be great, and that age won’t have anything to do with this. They will outperform guys in today’s game,” Mathur speculates.
It’s unclear how ready Mayweather is since he hasn’t fought a title fight against a former champion boxer in 11 years.
Amid reports he’s having financial trouble, Mayweather recently sued Showtime for more than $300 million alleged misappropriated earnings from his 2013-2017 pay-per-views.
“Let me be very clear on this: Floyd Mayweather is not broke,” Mathur said. “All these people speculating, writing things … he has a lot of haters, a lot of people who are jealous. People only talk about people who matter.
“Things get spread, one fire leads to another and word travels. He can take loans against real estate and buy things. That’s smart to do, right? Why not leverage it? It’s business. Is he coming back just because he doesn’t have money? That’s false.
“Anyone who says that doesn’t know him personally. Do they know anything about his life? People like to spread things to create a media buzz. Floyd doesn’t care.”
What he does care about are money and the “0” in his loss ledger.
By coming back, he’s guaranteed of securing one and willing to gamble once more on the other.
Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.
