Pacquiao-Hatton tickets a hot commodity

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Promoters for Manny Pacquiao and Ricky Hatton tell me that more than 14,000 tickets were sold Friday, generating about $8 million in sales. And, yes, Friday was the first day that tickets went on sale for the May 2 junior-welterweight bout at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.

Pacquiao promoter Bob Arum said about 1,200 seats are still available in the $1,000-seat section -- the most expensive category -- and another 700 are available at $750 a pop. There are some single seats available in other price categories.

But Las Vegas typically draws a good number of Super Bowl high rollers, so Arum expects the remaining high-priced seats to be sold by the time Super Bowl XLIII ends.

‘This fight will definitely be sold out,’ Arum said. ‘We’re now figuring out the closed-circuit plan for Las Vegas. We knew it was a hot fight.’

The sour economy, however, led promoters to drop the most expensive price from $1,500 -- as it was for Pacquiao’s Dec. 6 victory over Oscar De La Hoya at the same arena -- to $1,000.

Hatton promoter Richard Schaefer described the live gate numbers as a ‘huge, huge success [that] shows what kind of super-fight this is shaping up to be.’

-- Lance Pugmire