Pacquiao brings home more ‘bacon’

By Peter Q. Mata
 The Palawan Times

Manny Pacquiao was the talk of the sporting world in the wake of his astonishing beatdown of Antonio Margarito. Already a multi-millionaire, Filipino boxing icon Manny Pacquiao has at least another US$25 million coming for battering Mexican Antonio Margarito into submission in Texas last weekend. That is before the taxman lops off a big chunk of it. But for all intents and purposes, boxing’s pound-for-pound king no longer needs to work for the rest of his life, unless he overindulges and blows it all away. For his 12-round, 36-minute work in the ring with Margarito, Pacquiao earned an estimated $25 million, equivalent to 1.1 billion pesos. This translates to $694,000 or 30.5 million pesos per minute. All in all, Margarito landed 135 power punches during the bout – which meant that for every one of those punches Pacquiao took, the Filipino idol earned $135,000 – or 8 million pesos. What the Pacquiao-Margarito fight failed to generate at the gates it drew from pay-per-view (PPV). Figures show the Pacquiao fight stands to be one of the most watched ever in boxing history: as many as 1.5 million PPV hits. If the bruising fight indeed hit 1.5 million PPV buys, it would eclipse the 1.4 million PPV buys posted by the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Shane Mosley bout in May and confirm Pacquiao’s status as PPV’s most bankable boxer at present. With each buy costing $54.95, Pacquiao-Margarito PPV hits of 1.5-million translate to $82 million. From total PPV sales, Pacquiao stands to get about 12.5 percent of the projected $82-million revenue, or $10 million. This is on top of his guaranteed purse of $15 million for the fight that earned him an unprecedented eighth world title in as many weight classes. Those four fights brought him $67 million altogether. That does not include the estimated $25 million he earned from his fight with Margarito. Ranged against those amounts, Pacquiao’s gross pay as a congressman about P75,000 pesos a month, would seem like only loose coins for him. While he is also entitled to an annual country wide development fund of P70-million, that money is intended for projects in his congressional district. Veteran promoter Bob Arum has seen it all in a career spanning almost half a century and he unwaveringly believes Pacquiao has become the best fighter of all time. Arum has worked with giants of the ring such as Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler and Roberto Duran but none of them, in his opinion, ever dominated with both fists in the manner of the diminutive Filipino southpaw.