Looks like Hatton- Paquiao is off

[Kirkland Laing]

Your right on that. But Pac is the hotter fighter. He's p4p number 1. He's taking the bigger risk by going to Hatton's weight class. And he has just as many groupies as Hatton does. More in the US than Hatton does. On top of that he did what Hatton didn't think he could do. And that's beat Boxings most popular fighter.

As far as who brings the revenue to the fight Hatton probably brings more than Manny. Manny beating Oscar only makes him a draw with hardcore boxing fans. Put him in a PPV where his opponent isn't either American or Latino and how many buys will he sell? Hatton brings up to $30 million to the promotion just from UK TV PPV buys. That's the equivalent of 600 000 US PPV buys. Manny isn't worth 600 000 more PPV buys than Hatton to the promotion and Manny's domestic TV revenue would bring in the region of $50 000. He'll earn only a fraction of what he could make fighting Hatton for his next fight while Hatton will make ten million plus fighting somebody at Wembley. Manny bottled it.

(Or at least he may well agree in a day or a week. IIRC the Oscar negotiations went on for a couple of months and it was on again off again till they finally agreed. He already got Hatton down to 53-47, maybe it ends up 55-45. But if there's no agreement, because Manny is turning down a payday far in excess of anything else he can make fighting somebody else, he's clearly bottling the fight.)

If the fight happens it happens in the US. Not the UK. Ever since the Calzaghe-Kessler debacle (lowest HBO ratings ever) HBO has pretty much stop giving a fukk about other countries. They've done the smart thing and gone back to simply worrying about the US. And in the US Pac easily trumps Hatton. Why you think Pac-David Diaz was on PPV and Hatton-Lazcano was on the Vesus channel? Pac has an audience here. Hatton doesn't.

Facts are Hatton needs Pac more than Pac needs him. Especally status wise. Pac can fight Marquez for the 3rd time. Or take on Valero or Campbell. Maybe get Mayweather out of retirement. Hell he's even talking stupid about facing Margarito. All them fights elevate his staus. What's Hatton going to do? Keep ruling a weak 140 division. Wins over Holt or Bradley would be nice. But do little. Marquez maybe. But Marquez wants Pac more than anything. A Mayweather rematch is a no sell without Hatton beating Pac first. And he won't go back to 147. So what's he going to do? He should take the 40% and make the fight. That 40% is still worth millions. So it's not like he's not going to eat.

Hatton-Lazcano was a comeback fight against a no-name opponent. Manny moving up to lightweight and fighting another Latino was an event that America's boxing fans wanted to see. And how many PPVs did it sell? 400 000. Hatton brings the equivalent of 600 000 PPV buys to the table from the UK only and sells thousands of tickets, turning the fight into an event. So Hatton single-handedly brings almost twice as much revenue to the table than a Manny fight has ever generated other than his fight against Oscar for which 1.4 milllion Americans paid to watch Oscar and 0.1 million Manny fans paid to watch Manny. Manny might have the number one ranking but Hatton is now far and away the number one-ranked revenue generator in boxing.

So some things we know for sure.

1. Hatton brings more money to the event than Manny.

2. Manny claimed before Oscar he only wanted big money fights in future.

3. Hatton is easily the biggest fight out there for him in terms of money. If Manny doesn't fight him he's looking at somebody like Soto or Campbell for a couple of million. Hatton can fight a tomato can in Manchester and make twice that or fight Oscar or JMM and make ten million plus, five times what Manny is looking at.

4. They both agreed on 50-50 before Christmas. Then Manny started asking for more money.

So what does that tell you?

EDIT : Manny-Diaz did 250 000 buys. He did 400 000 against JMM. So after he beat JMM it made him so popular with US boxing fans that the PPV buys almost halved for his next fight. That tells me that the bottler Manny needs a popular Latino or American fighter in the other corner to sell lots of PPVs.