Essential The Official Boxing Random Thoughts Thread...All boxing heads ENTER.
- Thread starter Jesus Is Lord
- Start date
He's obviously trolling
Instead of mentioning a big wwe name in his trolling like roman reigns or lesnar.. This guy mentions baron corbin
Andrade has zero sense for promoting himself
reservoirdogs
Superstar
Would be solid enough but heard Bivol wanna fight Zurdo in June. If that’s true Zurdo would choose that I guess. Immediate title shot against Bivol vs an eliminator with fighting Beterbiev being the prize.
soumds like an easy choice
Cruz vs Fernandez is a very good fight if it happens, Fernandez had alot of hype behind him before he got upset by Foster, and we've learned Foster is pretty decent himself.
 a great joke in there
King P
Legends Never Die
ChocolateGiddyUp
Superstar
Eddie Hearn on the belts don’t matter opps do Team 
Bu bu bu but Idongo .... Bu bu bu but Ricky Burns
Bu bu bu but Idongo .... Bu bu bu but Ricky Burns
interesting..i thought nakatani got his retina detached again in the verdejo fight?
vaysl will fight a semi disabled man..not interested!
--via The Athletic--
Purse bids are common in boxing, an instrument utilized to reach an agreement toward mandatory title fights when opposing sides can’t consummate a deal during the free negotiation period. When the day arrives, any promoter in the sport is free to submit an envelope and the highest bidder wins the rights to the fight.
Earlier this week, the IBF ordered a purse bid for the upcoming fight between undisputed lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez and mandatory challenger George Kambosos. That, in and of itself, isn’t newsworthy. But this time, the purse bid has nothing to do with competing promoters.
It was actually called for because Lopez’s manager, David McWater, couldn’t reach terms with Top Rank on their offer of $1.25 million (the contracted minimum, sources tell The Athletic) for the matchup with Kambosos, an undefeated fighter from Australia who earned the title shot with a decision win over Lee Selby in October.
And now the possibility looms that a competing entity like Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing or Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions could swoop in and buy the rights to the fight, poaching away one of Bob Arum’s top stars for his first championship defense following an eye-opening performance against Vasiliy Lomachenko on Oct. 17.
Arum has long lauded Lomachenko as the best fighter he’s promoted since Muhammad Ali. Lopez (16-0, 12 KOs) clearly defeated Lomachenko (earning more than $1.25 million) and won fighter of the year honors from both The Athletic and the Boxing Writers’ Association of America. The 23-year-old’s popularity has skyrocketed since the victory, an event that was a ratings bonanza for Top Rank and ESPN with nearly 3 million viewers.
Top Rank is in the midst of a seven-year deal with the network that pays the promoter approximately $84 million in rights fees annually; surely ESPN would like to continue building Lopez on its platform in a sport where exclusivity reigns supreme.
Teofimo Lopez, right, defeated longtime pound-for-pound mainstay Vasiliy Lomachenko in October. (Mikey Williams/Top Rank)
The squabble between Top Rank and Lopez’s management over money could push the budding star from ESPN to another network with DAZN, FOX and Showtime waiting in the wings for the Feb. 18 purse bid.
“There’s no animosity … we evaluate how much a fight is worth … and we determine that and try to close the deal (at that price point),” Arum told The Athletic. “If a fight is extremely valuable to ESPN we will maybe change our position and offer a little bit more.
“If a fight is just a fight, and the asking (price) is appreciably more than what we’re able to pay, we just pass and let someone else do it. That’s the only way you keep from going out of business. You can’t keep chasing.”
The 89-year-old promoter apparently feels that way after Lopez’s multi-year deal was renegotiated in advance of the Lomachenko showdown.
Teofimo’s old minimum for a title fight defense, sources said, was $150,000. If he lost to Lomachenko, it would rise to $500,000. A win would bump it up to $1.25 million, the amount being offered for the routine title defense against Kambosos.
But if this is just another fight for Lopez, McWater said the blame lies with Top Rank, not the fighter.
“They had between Oct. 18 and Feb. 6 to schedule a big fight for him and get out of the purse bid,” McWater, the BWAA’s 2020 manager of the year, told The Athletic. “They could have got an exception (with the IBF) for this fight. When they say it’s a shyt fight or anything like that, they could have made a different fight and chose not to.
“We would have liked to have fought somebody else. They never made a good faith order, what am I supposed to do? All I’ve done is reject their offer which is the minimum. If you line up a thousand idiots off the street and say ‘you’re going to get a job, do you want minimum wage?’ all thousand will ask for more.”
McWater said Top Rank didn’t even make an offer for the fight until Feb. 5, the day before the IBF’s free negotiation period ended. He hasn’t heard from them since that day.
So with attempts to gain his client more than the new minimum stalled, McWater is gambling that the fight is worth far more on the open market. Lopez, as the champion, stands to make 65% of the winning bid with the other 35% going to Kambosos.
“To (Top Rank), the market means ‘what can we get away with?’ To me, the market means ‘what value does something have?’” McWater said. “I guess, apparently, they’re vastly different things. That’s why God made purse bids and I’m going to have faith in God and see how the purse bid goes.
“It’s (Arum’s) relationship with ESPN, not mine. … Our intention was to be on ESPN. If they don’t want us, I guess we’ll be with whatever network does.”
Arum said if Lopez-Kambosos lands on a different platform, “the world hasn’t ended.” That’s Top Rank’s take. What about ESPN’s position? The network threw its considerable muscle behind the fight with Lomachenko and helped build Lopez into an attraction with several bouts following the annual Heisman Trophy presentation in December.
Lopez did his part by scoring spectacular knockouts in those developmental fights and parlayed them into a career-defining showdown with Lomachenko, then considered one of the top three pound-for-pound fighters in boxing.
The Brooklyn native thought he had cashed in with the upset victory, but Top Rank had other ideas, at least for a bout where Lopez would be heavily favored against a relatively unknown opponent. If no deal is reached before Feb. 18, Arum’s bluff that he’s OK with Lopez fighting on another platform could be called.
“Teofimo is one of the biggest stars in boxing right now, so clearly we would be active in a purse bid if the opportunity arose,” Hearn told The Athletic.
Top Rank’s Bob Arum says he’s fine with Teofimo Lopez fighting elsewhere for his first title defense. (Al Bello/Getty Images)
There is precedent when it comes to Top Rank allowing one of its high-profile champions to compete on another platform. In July 2019, the company struck a deal with Hearn to stage a 140-pound title unification between its fighter, Jose Ramirez, and Matchroom’s boxer, Maurice Hooker.
Ramirez earned a career-high purse north of $3 million for his knockout victory, then returned to ESPN with two titles in his collection. But Lopez, with his bombastic personality and flashy in-ring style, is a considerably bigger TV attraction than Ramirez was at that stage.
“We have a three-and-a-half-year contract after the fight with (Lopez),” Arum pointed out. “If they put him on their platform, he comes right back to our platform and presumably he’s got viewers from their platform and now maybe they’re interested in him.
“ … (Lopez) had a title defense minimum and we more than doubled it. And now, suddenly, that becomes peanuts. That minimum wouldn’t have come into play if he lost the fight, it was only if he won, so what the hell are we talking about?”
Lopez grew up in the greater Miami area, but attempts to hold the event at Marlins Park (home of MLB’s Miami Marlins) were declined by Top Rank, per sources. Top Rank was planning to stage Lopez-Kambosos on June 12 at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
Last September, Top Rank staged a fight between unified champion Josh Taylor and Thailand’s Apinun Khongsong, a bout that ended in a first-round knockout. Arum feels burned by the mandatory title fight, and the flop clearly played a part in these negotiations.
“(Kambosos is) not like that Thai guy, a complete bum; he’s a pretty decent fighter. … A gutty guy,” Arum said. “But again, that doesn’t mean that he is an elite fighter which against Teofimo would make a real sizzling match like a (Ryan) Garcia, like a Tank Davis, like a (Devin) Haney.
“He’s not even a (Jorge) Linares, which again you could make an argument for. He’s a decent guy and courageous and it’s a fight. But do you have any doubt that the fight would go off at a big price? If someone buys that fight, God bless ‘em.”
Just maybe, Arum, isn’t bluffing. Maybe the hall-of-fame promoter really is content to allow Lopez to fight on a competitor’s platform in a stone-faced attempt to rein in fighter purses.
But he’s not the only interested party here. ESPN could have its say, too, and it wouldn’t be surprising if executives at the network implore Top Rank to find a solution that cancels the purse bid and keeps Teofimo on ESPN so he can build off the momentum of the Lomachenko triumph.
Time is ticking, and if no deal is reached in the coming week, the purse bid will be held on Feb. 18. Hearn, Haymon and others will surely be champing at the bit to cause a bit of chaos in a sport brimming with competing interests.
“I’m sure (McWater) thinks he’s doing the right thing,” Arum said. “Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t, but we have to run our business like a business. Teofimo is a terrific kid, a terrific fighter; he’s going to have a great, great, future.”
If Lopez-Kambosos lands on another platform, Arum said he’ll “substitute something for that fight on ESPN, which will be hopefully a more competitive fight and the world goes on.
“It’s not the end of the world.”
(Top photo: Mikey Williams/Top Rank)
Purse bids are common in boxing, an instrument utilized to reach an agreement toward mandatory title fights when opposing sides can’t consummate a deal during the free negotiation period. When the day arrives, any promoter in the sport is free to submit an envelope and the highest bidder wins the rights to the fight.
Earlier this week, the IBF ordered a purse bid for the upcoming fight between undisputed lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez and mandatory challenger George Kambosos. That, in and of itself, isn’t newsworthy. But this time, the purse bid has nothing to do with competing promoters.
It was actually called for because Lopez’s manager, David McWater, couldn’t reach terms with Top Rank on their offer of $1.25 million (the contracted minimum, sources tell The Athletic) for the matchup with Kambosos, an undefeated fighter from Australia who earned the title shot with a decision win over Lee Selby in October.
And now the possibility looms that a competing entity like Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing or Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions could swoop in and buy the rights to the fight, poaching away one of Bob Arum’s top stars for his first championship defense following an eye-opening performance against Vasiliy Lomachenko on Oct. 17.
Arum has long lauded Lomachenko as the best fighter he’s promoted since Muhammad Ali. Lopez (16-0, 12 KOs) clearly defeated Lomachenko (earning more than $1.25 million) and won fighter of the year honors from both The Athletic and the Boxing Writers’ Association of America. The 23-year-old’s popularity has skyrocketed since the victory, an event that was a ratings bonanza for Top Rank and ESPN with nearly 3 million viewers.
Top Rank is in the midst of a seven-year deal with the network that pays the promoter approximately $84 million in rights fees annually; surely ESPN would like to continue building Lopez on its platform in a sport where exclusivity reigns supreme.
Teofimo Lopez, right, defeated longtime pound-for-pound mainstay Vasiliy Lomachenko in October. (Mikey Williams/Top Rank)
The squabble between Top Rank and Lopez’s management over money could push the budding star from ESPN to another network with DAZN, FOX and Showtime waiting in the wings for the Feb. 18 purse bid.
“There’s no animosity … we evaluate how much a fight is worth … and we determine that and try to close the deal (at that price point),” Arum told The Athletic. “If a fight is extremely valuable to ESPN we will maybe change our position and offer a little bit more.
“If a fight is just a fight, and the asking (price) is appreciably more than what we’re able to pay, we just pass and let someone else do it. That’s the only way you keep from going out of business. You can’t keep chasing.”
The 89-year-old promoter apparently feels that way after Lopez’s multi-year deal was renegotiated in advance of the Lomachenko showdown.
Teofimo’s old minimum for a title fight defense, sources said, was $150,000. If he lost to Lomachenko, it would rise to $500,000. A win would bump it up to $1.25 million, the amount being offered for the routine title defense against Kambosos.
But if this is just another fight for Lopez, McWater said the blame lies with Top Rank, not the fighter.
“They had between Oct. 18 and Feb. 6 to schedule a big fight for him and get out of the purse bid,” McWater, the BWAA’s 2020 manager of the year, told The Athletic. “They could have got an exception (with the IBF) for this fight. When they say it’s a shyt fight or anything like that, they could have made a different fight and chose not to.
“We would have liked to have fought somebody else. They never made a good faith order, what am I supposed to do? All I’ve done is reject their offer which is the minimum. If you line up a thousand idiots off the street and say ‘you’re going to get a job, do you want minimum wage?’ all thousand will ask for more.”
McWater said Top Rank didn’t even make an offer for the fight until Feb. 5, the day before the IBF’s free negotiation period ended. He hasn’t heard from them since that day.
So with attempts to gain his client more than the new minimum stalled, McWater is gambling that the fight is worth far more on the open market. Lopez, as the champion, stands to make 65% of the winning bid with the other 35% going to Kambosos.
“To (Top Rank), the market means ‘what can we get away with?’ To me, the market means ‘what value does something have?’” McWater said. “I guess, apparently, they’re vastly different things. That’s why God made purse bids and I’m going to have faith in God and see how the purse bid goes.
“It’s (Arum’s) relationship with ESPN, not mine. … Our intention was to be on ESPN. If they don’t want us, I guess we’ll be with whatever network does.”
Arum said if Lopez-Kambosos lands on a different platform, “the world hasn’t ended.” That’s Top Rank’s take. What about ESPN’s position? The network threw its considerable muscle behind the fight with Lomachenko and helped build Lopez into an attraction with several bouts following the annual Heisman Trophy presentation in December.
Lopez did his part by scoring spectacular knockouts in those developmental fights and parlayed them into a career-defining showdown with Lomachenko, then considered one of the top three pound-for-pound fighters in boxing.
The Brooklyn native thought he had cashed in with the upset victory, but Top Rank had other ideas, at least for a bout where Lopez would be heavily favored against a relatively unknown opponent. If no deal is reached before Feb. 18, Arum’s bluff that he’s OK with Lopez fighting on another platform could be called.
“Teofimo is one of the biggest stars in boxing right now, so clearly we would be active in a purse bid if the opportunity arose,” Hearn told The Athletic.
Top Rank’s Bob Arum says he’s fine with Teofimo Lopez fighting elsewhere for his first title defense. (Al Bello/Getty Images)
There is precedent when it comes to Top Rank allowing one of its high-profile champions to compete on another platform. In July 2019, the company struck a deal with Hearn to stage a 140-pound title unification between its fighter, Jose Ramirez, and Matchroom’s boxer, Maurice Hooker.
Ramirez earned a career-high purse north of $3 million for his knockout victory, then returned to ESPN with two titles in his collection. But Lopez, with his bombastic personality and flashy in-ring style, is a considerably bigger TV attraction than Ramirez was at that stage.
“We have a three-and-a-half-year contract after the fight with (Lopez),” Arum pointed out. “If they put him on their platform, he comes right back to our platform and presumably he’s got viewers from their platform and now maybe they’re interested in him.
“ … (Lopez) had a title defense minimum and we more than doubled it. And now, suddenly, that becomes peanuts. That minimum wouldn’t have come into play if he lost the fight, it was only if he won, so what the hell are we talking about?”
Lopez grew up in the greater Miami area, but attempts to hold the event at Marlins Park (home of MLB’s Miami Marlins) were declined by Top Rank, per sources. Top Rank was planning to stage Lopez-Kambosos on June 12 at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
Last September, Top Rank staged a fight between unified champion Josh Taylor and Thailand’s Apinun Khongsong, a bout that ended in a first-round knockout. Arum feels burned by the mandatory title fight, and the flop clearly played a part in these negotiations.
“(Kambosos is) not like that Thai guy, a complete bum; he’s a pretty decent fighter. … A gutty guy,” Arum said. “But again, that doesn’t mean that he is an elite fighter which against Teofimo would make a real sizzling match like a (Ryan) Garcia, like a Tank Davis, like a (Devin) Haney.
“He’s not even a (Jorge) Linares, which again you could make an argument for. He’s a decent guy and courageous and it’s a fight. But do you have any doubt that the fight would go off at a big price? If someone buys that fight, God bless ‘em.”
Just maybe, Arum, isn’t bluffing. Maybe the hall-of-fame promoter really is content to allow Lopez to fight on a competitor’s platform in a stone-faced attempt to rein in fighter purses.
But he’s not the only interested party here. ESPN could have its say, too, and it wouldn’t be surprising if executives at the network implore Top Rank to find a solution that cancels the purse bid and keeps Teofimo on ESPN so he can build off the momentum of the Lomachenko triumph.
Time is ticking, and if no deal is reached in the coming week, the purse bid will be held on Feb. 18. Hearn, Haymon and others will surely be champing at the bit to cause a bit of chaos in a sport brimming with competing interests.
“I’m sure (McWater) thinks he’s doing the right thing,” Arum said. “Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t, but we have to run our business like a business. Teofimo is a terrific kid, a terrific fighter; he’s going to have a great, great, future.”
If Lopez-Kambosos lands on another platform, Arum said he’ll “substitute something for that fight on ESPN, which will be hopefully a more competitive fight and the world goes on.
“It’s not the end of the world.”
(Top photo: Mikey Williams/Top Rank)
this is good..conlan needs a fight to get him some respect; dogboe needs a fight to get his groove back and take a zero too
well at least bivol would be fighting but i feel no heat from this fight at all
imagine the fukkery if eddie wins that bid and lopez gets upsetted on DAZN 
it will be something like hooker vs saucedo all over again for them
it will be something like hooker vs saucedo all over again for them