Report: Pacquiao-Hatton PPV 'may be' 2nd highest

MANILA, Philippines – Manny Pacquiao certainly made a good, profitable case for being called boxing's next big draw. His fight with Ricky Hatton garnered as much as 850,000 pay-per-view buys in the United States, ESPN.com's Dan Rafael reported on Thursday, one of the highest among non-heavyweight fights in the history of the sport. Excluding Oscar de la Hoya's bouts, the Pacquiao-Hatton match landed second all-time in the aforementioned category behind the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Hatton slugfest in December 2007. That bout earned 915,000 US domestic buys. Bob Arum, Pacquiao's promoter, and Golden Boy Promotions, which handles Hatton, did not confirm the numbers. So did HBO Pay-Per-View. Arum told Rafael that he would not officially release the pay-per-view data. "Everyone involved in the event did a good job, but it's nobody's business what the numbers are but ours and the fighters," Arum said. The Pacquiao-De la Hoya fight last December, which attracted 1.25 million PPV buys, is the third highest in aggregate PPV sales for non-heavyweight fights. – GMANews.TV