Highest Grossing Boxing Fights of All times
Victory over Pacquiao and McGregor made Floyd Mayweather the first boxer to earn $1 billion in boxing while also becoming the king of PPV. Floyd Patterson's rematch with Sweden's Ingemar Johansson in 1960 was the first pay-per-view match in boxing history. It generated 25,000 purchases, which at the time was a success but in today's market, it would be seen as a disaster. The trilogy, 18 months later, has quadrupled its sales.
The Rumble in the Jungle between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier quickly followed a similar pattern and generated $500 million. Since then, the likes of Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Oscar De La Hoya, and Floyd Mayweather have achieved much.
Fast-forward 60 years since the first PPV and it's fair to say the pattern has evolved over the years, especially when you compare Patterson-Johansson's prices to some of the most popular matches in recent years, which you will be lucky to get a change from $100.
PPV Buys and PPV Revenue generated by Boxing Fights
| Fight | PPV Buys | PPV Revenue |
| Floyd Mayweather V Manny Pacquiao | 4,600,000 | $410 million |
| Floyd Mayweather V Conor McGregor | 4,300,000 | $396 million |
| Floyd Mayweather V Canelo Álverez | 2,200,000 | $150 million |
| Floyd Mayweather V Oscar De La Hoya | 2,480,000 | $136 million |
| Mike Tyson V Lennox Lewis | 1,950,000 | $112 million |
| Mike Tyson V Evander Holyfield II | 1,990,000 | $100.2 million |
| Mike Tyson V Peter McNeeley | 1,550,000 | $96 million |
| Floyd Mayweather V Miguel Cotto | 1,500,000 | $94 Million |
| Mike Tyson V Roy Jones Jr. | 1,650,000 | $80.5 million |
| Evander Holyfield V George Foreman | 1,450,000 | $80 million |
Mayweather is G.O.A.T to sell PPV battles. Mayweather has made $1.8 billion in purchases from 24 million paying customers after losing to De La Hoya in year 2007. It is safe to say that his divorce from his $750,000 Top Rank in 2006 was a step in the right direction. To watch the match, it would cost consumers $2, and for those who did. Thus, Patterson regained his first European champion's heavyweight belt.
The Cinco De Mayo weekend in early May is considered the Super Bowl of boxing while Mexican Independence Weekend - the second weekend in September - is considered another lucrative time of the boxing year. However, Mayweather and Conor McGregor proved that you can sell PPV beyond those days, generating $550 million in sales from their August 2017 monster show.