This past Saturday night in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, Floyd Mayweather put on another dominant performance over the game, but highly over matched, Robert Guerrero, televised live on Showtime pay per view.  The win was yet another mark in the W column for Floyd both in terms of his professional record, but also to his bank account.  The reported guarantee for Floyd was a whopping $32 million.  However, when the gate money and pay per views buys are finally tallied, will Showtime come out on top financially from this fight?

The build up to this fight was unusual in that there was no kick off press conference due to the extended period of time it took to finalize the negotiations.  In place of that, CBS and Showtime dedicated 100 hours on its collective airwaves in a push to sell what was perceived as a mismatch from the beginning.  Odds makers immediately installed Floyd as a nearly 10-1 favorite.  With that 100 hours also came the danger of over saturating the public with what are essentially extended commercials.  How much Floyd can the general public take?  Episodes of ‘All Access’ and the documentaries ‘30 Days In May’ and ‘Mayweather’ had declines in ratings with each consecutive airing.

Another risk that may or may not have been overcome in the final hours was a pricing structure that completely alienated the casual fan.  Tickets started at $200, and nothing in the lower bowl of the arena had a face value of less than $800.  While the cheapest seats and the most expensive seats sold quickly, as is the norm, everything in the middle was up for grabs until the day of the fight.  Tickets were going for a little over half of their face value on the secondary market late last week.  In the arena on fight night though, it seemed that the dumping of those tickets worked out at least in the sense that people filled the seats.

Then there was the fight itself.  Coming into this training camp, Floyd re-united with his father as head trainer.  The two have shared a volatile relationship in the past, but seem to have worked things out.  Floyd, Sr. is a defense minded coach, and it showed on Saturday night.  In recent fights, Floyd had been moving less, standing in the pocket, and making for more exciting matches.  That was not to be the case this time around.  Floyd employed a hit and move plan, landing jabs and straight right hands at will all night long with surgical precision.  Guerrero was completely befuddled as he chased his opponent around for all 12 rounds while landing little punches of value.  This elicited sporadic choruses of boos from those in attendance throughout the fight.

Floyd controlled the entire match with a display of skill as masterful as we have seen in his generation.  From a purist stand point, this was great.  However, purists do not make up the majority of the paying public that is needed to generate the revenue to make this contract financially viable for Showtime.  The casual American fan wants to see knockouts.  They want to see foes bloodied and beaten.  Although Floyd was able to hurt and cut Guerrero, he never pressed the gas enough to make it seem like this was going to be anything but a decision win.  The drama was never there.  After witnessing such a one sided tactical fight, will John Q. Casual Fan want to see Floyd again?  Will they be open to paying the highest ticket prices in the sport?  For Floyd, his contract is guaranteed.  Showtime, on the other hand,  is starting to find out the massive risk they took when this deal was signed.