Boxing News & Notes: Trinidad Retires?; Barrera-Morales & Lewis-Tyson PPV Numbers

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Trinidad Retires?; Barrera-Morales & Lewis-Tyson PPV Numbers

Boxing News & Notes: July 7, 2002

In a prepared statement, Felix Trinidad has announced that he has 'positively decided to retire as a professional prizefighter'. Whatever. We've heard that many times before in boxing but Tito added a unique twist, declaring that he can now 'go ahead with college studies'. Nice idea. Not going to happen. Trinidad's father, manager, trainer and mouthpiece, don Félix Trinidad Rodríguez, claims that the decision to retire is largely because Oscar de la Hoya, Bernard Hopkins and Fernando Vargas refuse to agree to rematches with his son. Promoter Don King says he will try to persuade Hopkins to face Trinidad in a November rematch. Meanwhile, Hopkins says King and HBO are responsible for Trinidad's retirement because they've refused to arrange a rematch. Got that? Trinidad, Trinidad's father, Hopkins, Don King and, presumabley, HBO all want a rematch yet nothing is happening to make it happen. Only in boxing . . .

The Marco Antonio Barrera - Erik Morales rematch on HBO pay-per-view fight generated between 300,000 and 325,000 buys, about the same number of buys as last year's Barrera-Naseem Hamed bout. That translates to just over $13 million in revenue. With that kind of revenue generating power, two entertaining and controversial decisions and the series tied at one win apiece, a third fight is all but inevitable.

The Lennox Lewis - Mike Tyson fight not only IS history, it MADE history, shattering numerous boxing event records:

*Lewis-Tyson was the highest-grossing event in pay-per-view history with an estimated $103 million in revenue. The previous record was set by Tyson-Holyfield II at $99 million.
*Lewis-Tyson had the highest gross gate revenue at $17.5 million. The previous record was set by Lewis-Holyfield II at $16.8 million.
*Lewis-Tyson had the largest international-television revenue guarantee.
*Lewis-Tyson had the highest grossing closed circuit sales for any pay-per-view event.

With no truly mega-fights on the horizon, it may be quite a while before we see these records challenged.

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