Pacquiao vs Mosley Could Be Highest-Selling Pacquiao PPV Ever

Steve Kim tweeted an update a short while ago which said Bob Arum believes the Manny Pacquiao vs Shane Mosley pay-per-view could settle in at 1.3 million sold, which would make it the highest-selling Manny Pacquiao pay-per-view to date.

Here are the past figures:

This table only counts Pacquiao's historic run since became a major event headliner against Oscar de la Hoya. Prior to that, he and Juan Manuel Marquez sold 400,000 pay-per-views in March 2008, which is still a record for fighters their size (130 lbs. at the time) and under.

We're certainly not saying that Pacquiao vs Mosley definitely sold 1.3 million and set the Pacquiao benchmark a little higher than the Oscar and Cotto fights, and Arum has a long history of overestimating pay-per-view buys. He also spent about two weeks desperately trying to hide the Pacquiao-Hatton numbers, which he felt were a gross disappointment apparently, while HBO and Golden Boy (co-promoters for the fight) were reportedly quite happy with the figure. Arum had gone somewhat insane during the press tour predicting record-breaking figures, and of course the fight didn't come close to that.

But the obvious guarantee is this: Pacquiao vs Mosley did at least 1,000,000 buys, which I guess if it's a flat million, some will see as a disappointment. I think they were shooting to at least match the Margarito fight, and probably consider 1.2 million a true success. That seems very possible, even likely. Whether or not the final numbers surpass that remains to be seen.

For comparison's sake, here are Floyd Mayweather's PPV buys against common opponents:

Obviously, no one sells quite like Floyd on pay-per-view, no matter what you think of his personality.