Calzaghe earns career-high $10 Million purse for Jones fight

Very likely wrong. You're probably not thinking about this correctly. Which is understandable. You seem to be a hater and you wanted the low PPV's -- and not Calz's career-high payday -- to be the last word on the subject. Since you lost out on that score, now you are feebly attempting to kick the ball a little further down the road and praying HBO or someone will help make your Calzaghe oowie feel better. If no one can beat Joe in the ring, you're thinking, at least maybe you can hope he has no more big paydays.

This is how haters' minds work.

Anyways, let me help you out on how this likely to play out and why Calz is likely to make even more money if he fights again in his home nation.

#1 - The live gate will be much larger

Let's take ryanm8655's 4 million figure from above. Let's assume the ticket prices are roughly the same (not to mention the Pound is worth more than the Dollar). There will be at least 3x the people in Wales than those that came to MSG. 3 x 4 million = $12 million, or $8 million more available from the gate aspect of the fight alone.

#2 - The primary PPV outlet seems like it will be Sky Sports, not HBO

In other words, any up-front payment based on PPV sales from the Jones fight will be meaningless. Obviously Joe is a bigger draw in the UK than he is in the USA, and that fact will be used by Team Calzaghe to negotiate with Sky Sports for a large purse. And Joe's just defeating another USA boxing legend gives him even greater leverage. There's nothing the Euros love more than to kick some USA ass, so people in the UK can be expected to plop down some $$$ hoping to see more of the same. What likely happens here is that HBO pays a rights fee to show the fight on their basic service. Thus, Joe gets that $$ as well but it's not based on PPV sales. HBO knows how the 24/7's did and seems very eager to back another Calz fight (based upon published reports). If they didn't think they could make money off of Joe, they wouldn't be making public statements saying they would fully back a Wales fight. The guy who supposedly lost them so much money, then, is the guy they're hoping to work with again. They must know something.

#3 - Joe's purse split will be larger than the 50/50 deal he had with Roy

Joe is the show now, especially after his wins over BHop and Roy. He's the draw, which is why everyone's trying to make a fight with him. Let's just pick a number, say, 65/35. More $$ for Joe.

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So, you have millions more to work with from the live gate, a potential big deal with Sky Sports for the PPV, a possible HBO rights fee and Joe getting a bigger split of the pie.

ryanm8655 said the Setanta figure was 500K viewers peak. There's a negotiating figure for Sky Sports, and the same 500K figure that HBO was hoping to get on its PPV. Keep in mind, this fight was shown at like, what, 4 AM or something in the UK? And it still got that number of viewers. How many more people do you think might watch if it were held at a more reasonable local time?

The drivers are there for Joe to not only make $10 Million again, but to exceed that figure. The people who understand this best are Joe, HBO, Sky Sports and the fighters who are eagerly trying to get Joe to take them on as his next opponent.

The news of Joe's career-high $10 Million payday is, as you can see, most debilitating for the Calz haters who were furiously clinging to the hope that the low PPV buy rate would somehow tarnish Joe's win or help drive down his purse. It did not, and now these haters are nervously grasping at fresh straws in an effort to assuage their defeat.

Unfortunately for them, if Joe returns to the ring in Wales, look for him to once again set a new career-high payday just as he did while waxing Roy Jones 11 rounds to 1 in New York City.