On the heals of Friday's announcement by HBO Sports that Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s victory over Juan Manuel Marquez generated an impressive 1 million pay-per-view buys, Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer made it clear that although he believes boxing and mixed martial arts can co-exist, he's confident that boxing will continue to outperform all other combat sports. "Media members kept talking about boxing is dying, but we knew what we had and we stayed the course and in the end, we have been vindicated," Schaefer commented in a recent interview with Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports.
Schaefer would go on to question whether or not pay-per-view numbers for UFC events were legitimate, pointing to the fact that the UFC is a private company and, as such, is not required to release actual numbers. "I don't want to talk shit about the UFC, but Dana White can't do an interview without knocking boxing. If he thinks we're idiots and don't know anything about the pay-per-view business, I'll make him a challenge," Schaefer continued, "I am willing to hire one of the top three accounting firms, at my expense, and do an audit of his pay-per-view results. They are nowhere near what is put into the public. There is talk that UFC 100 did 1.6 million, but it barely broke a million. I am willing to pay to have the audits done to prove this."
Upon hearing the news of the success of Mayweather vs. Marquez, UFC President Dana White remarked, "Bottom line, we did a good number and we still got our asses kicked. What they did was phenomenal and I'm happy for them. This was our fourth pay-per-view in two months and we still did a great number, but this was only their second all year." Regarding the challenge issued by Schaefer, White simply responded, "Do you think I'm fucking crazy?"
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