Cotto-Canelo Not a Hot Ticket

LAS VEGAS -- With the muscle backing the marketing and hype machine for Saturday’s Miguel Cotto-Saul “Canelo” Alvarez middleweight showdown at Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino Events Center, and also being shown on HBO Pay-Per-View, you would figure the lines would be long and the demand great for tickets.

Not so.

As of early Saturday afternoon, the event still wasn’t sold out. The fight, at a 155-pound catchweight, does feature two of the most exciting, action fighters there are today in boxing. It carries transcendent features, with the underlying story of the legendary Puerto Rico-Mexico rivalry.

What was expected to be a hot ticket isn’t.

The Event Center seats 12,000. Three-quarter of the tickets to make Cotto-Alvarez have bene sold. Tickets that weren’t on sale in August and September are on sale at half the ticket face value. Seats in the upper deck were originally charged at $1,200. They have dropped considerably since then.

In addressing the media for this fight last week, Golden Boy Promotions President Oscar De La Hoya predicted this event would pull in 1.5 million buys in a conference. Michael Yormark, from Roc Nation Sports which promotes Cotto, put the buys at two million. But a few experts that track those numbers here in Las Vegas said that figure may fall more likely around 1.2-to-1.3 million buys.

Secondary-market brokers were scrambling right up until fight time Saturday night to unload tickets, looking to get any return.

What could be causing this backlash?

One idea could be the turnoff the May 2 Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight was to crossover fans. Another thought is how high the original ticket prices were, over estimating a demand that the promoters thought would be there.

Where this goes is anyone’s guess. Cotto and Alvarez promise to put a great fight, given their track records. And the PPV buys should be roughly in or over a million. But it’s not a fight, at least at the prices listed, the public is lining up to see in the great numbers anticipated.

Joseph Santoliquito is the president of the Boxing Writer's Association of America and a frequent contributor to Sherdog.com's mixed martial arts and boxing coverage. His archive can be found here.