Floyd Mayweather Jr. Signs with Showtime; fights Robert Guerrero on May 4th.

This is by far, the biggest combat sports related story of 2013. I don’t see any other story in the next 10 months challenging this one.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. will be fighting Robert Guerrero on May 4th on Showtime PPV. HBO has just lost the number one pound-for-pound boxer on the planet and the number one combat sports draw.

This is the press release, which indicates how huge this is financially:

Mayweather’s new deal is by far the biggest in the sport of boxing (specific financial details are contractually confidential). Mayweather is the PPV king and averages over 1 million PPV buys per event, which is the highest PPV buy average of any boxer in history. At this record-setting PPV performance level, if all six fights contemplated by this deal occur, it will be the richest individual athlete deal in all of sports.

First, I want to say that it’s great that Guerrero got this opportunity. In past years, he’s struggled with issues both in his personal (wife’s battle with leukemia) and professional (shoulder injury) life.   He had been begging for this fight for ages, and he’s finally gotten it through the hard, rough, and gritty fights he’s had in 2012.

Showtime started gaining a lot of steam last year. They decided to run head-to-head against HBO’s Chavez-Martinez clash with their own Canelo-Lopez fight, which turned out to be a very successful evening for both networks. In December, they did a fantastic job hyping up a quality Cotto-Trout showdown in Madison Square Garden with their All Access programming. By taking Mayweather away from HBO, this is truly game changing.

Building up stars is almost like winning the lottery. Everything has to come together perfectly to create a fighter that will draw on PPV. Other than a potential Pacquiao vs Marquez V showdown (which will be huge on PPV), HBO is going to have to get lucky with one of their up and coming boxers. For HBO’s sake, I hope Adrien Broner is that star that can lead them to the future in a post-Mayweather world.

For Showtime, this is such a huge and monumental moment for them. They have certainly build themselves up in a way that I never imagined.