Highest-paid athletes - Who says boxing is dead?

Floyd Mayweather knocks Tiger Woods out of the top spot on the list of the world's 100 highest-paid athletes. Earning $85 million for two fights and a total of one hour's worth of ring time in 12 months? Sign me up.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/mayweather-tops-list-worlds-100-highest-paid-athletes-164158726--spt.html

The top 10:
1. Floyd Mayweather ($85 million)
2. Manny Pacquiao ($62 million)
3. Tiger Woods ($59.4 million)
4. Lebron James ($53 million)
5. Roger Federer ($52.7 million)
6. Kobe Bryant ($52.3 million)
7. Phil Mickelson ($47.8 million)
8. David Beckham ($46 million)
9. Cristiano Ronaldo ($42.5 million)
10. Peyton Manning ($42.4 million)

 

Yeah, but what do the boxing judges make?

 

$5K a fight generally. Before pay-off money.

 

That lots of sports bars order the PPV doesn't mean much in terms of boxing's health.

 

According to HBO, Mayweather-Cotto sold 1.5 million PPV orders. How many viewers is that? A million and a half? Three million? 10.5 Million?


The first three Miami v Boston Conference finals games all pulled bigger audiences.

 

To be fair, you're not paying $50 to watch them, though.

 

Well, you're paying for basic cable.

PPV receipts aren't a particularly accurate reflection of boxing's health. As I said, how many of those PPV orders were sports bars?

And MMA outdraws boxing annually by a factor of magnitude on a PPV basis.

 

Staggering to think what guys like Ali and Leonard, who always fought the top guys around and had the personalities to produce astronomical PPV buyrates, would make today.

 

Touche on the cable point, but that's also not an exclusive cost. If you're buying cable for just the NBA, then sure. But I've never heard of that happening.

And I won't fight on MMA, you have me there. You want to fix boxing's health? Give them one organization. How many belts are out there now? And nobody knows what the fuck the tiers of these belts are (unlike UFC and...not UFC), so it's harder for them to get into the sport. So boxing can't sell an entire thing, they have to sell one name.

Those NAMES make bank, but overall, yeah. Boxing's weak. Didn't mean to argue that it wasn't.

 

There are only two top guys though - Mayweather and Pacquiao, even after he got robbed. Will boxing have any more big draws after these guys hang up their gloves?

 

How much did these guys have to spend to box? I am sure that number they make is well divided.

 

Muhammad Ali made millions of dollars in his lifetime from getting repeatedly punched in the head/face.

That has not proved to be good for him.