Putting Floyd Mayweather's $210 Million Payout in Perspective

I knew superstar boxers made an obscene amount of money. But when I read yesterday’s report about this month’s Floyd Mayweather / Manny Pacquiao fight and the compensation that would be paid to each boxer—$210 million to Mayweather and $142 million to Pacquio—I had to read the line five times to try to absorb what I was seeing. The boxing match went 12 rounds of three minutes each. Mayweather made $210 million for a 36-minute job. That’s $5.8 million a minute—just under $100,000 a second. If you told me I could make $100,000 a second to get smashed in the face continually by Manny Pacquiao, with or without gloves, I’d probably just tough it out in there until he eventually killed me.

So I decided to stop everything and spend an upsetting amount of time putting this in perspective. Mayweather’s $210 million is more than entire cumulative career earnings of Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods—combined. It’s more than the Boston Red Sox entire 2015 team payroll. It’s more than the combined 2015 NFL and NBA salary caps. If you add up every dollar Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi earned in their careers and then tack on everything Roger Federer has earned so far in his, it still falls $37 million short of what Mayweather made on May 2 in those 36 minutes.

I eventually just put everything in a big “holy shit that’s a ridiculous payout Floyd Mayweather got for 36 minutes of boxing” graphic showing what is less than $210 million: