Floyd Mayweather is expected to make $178 million on the Pacquiao fight, more than any athlete has ever earned in a year
Floyd Mayweather needed less than hour to handedly defeat Manny Pacquiao in their much-anticipated Fight of the Century. The reward for that work will be about $178 million for Mayweather, with Pacquiao taking home a nice consolation price of about $122 million.
Those numbers are based on the pre-fight estimate that the two fighters would split $300 million for the fight, with most of the money split 60-40 in favor or Mayweather. That estimate was based on the forecast of 3.0 million pay-per-view (PPV) buys. According to Deadline, initial estimates put the number of PPV buys at "more than 3 million."
The final haul for Mayweather from this fight alone will easily break the record for most money earned by an athlete in a single year, surpassing Tiger Woods' inflation-adjusted mark of $125 million in 2008.
Here are the 14 instances in which an athlete made an inflation-adjusted $100 million or more in a single year, and how the earnings from Mayweather-Pacquiao compare.
