Tyson Fury vs Dillian Whyte will go to purse bids on January 11 – and Frank Warren reckons the challenger is lucky to be getting even a 20 per cent split.
Eddie Hearn, Whyte’s promoter, was seeking a 55/45 split in favour of the WBC world heavyweight world champion Fury during initial talks.
Whyte vs Fury is edging closer
As it turned out, the World Boxing Council ordered a purse split of 80-20 in Fury’s favour last week.
The WBC’s decision was heavily influenced by the monetary amounts on the contracts both boxers had lodged with them for their previous fights and Warren explained that’s why Fury’s camp stuck to their guns on the split.
The Queensbury Promotions kingpin even went as far as to disclose some of the figures for both fighters, too.
“I’ve always that said from day one,” Warren told to IFL TV of the purse split.
“What happens every time a boxer fights for a title, they lodge their contracts with the relevant governing body. The contracts that he’s lodged for his past few fights; his last one was £300,000 and one prior to that it was approximately £500,000.
“Tyson’s last fight was £20 million, so it could be nothing other than an 80-20 split, and really if you look at the money that they’ve earned on their last fights it shouldn’t even be 80-20 – but it is what it is.”
Warren is Fury’s promoter in the UK and co-promoter in the USMikey Williams/Top Rank
But is the fight going to happen?
Whyte still has an ongoing legal battle with the WBC that probably won’t be resolved until around March, but that’s when Fury is aiming to be fighting, whoever it ends up being.
“The objective is for Tyson to be out on March 26,” Warren said.
“From our perspective, he should be defending his title either against Dillian Whyte or something else if it’s there. But he wants to fight at the end of March so that’s where we’re at.”
Fury has been ordered to fight Whyte, but there’s still work to do
Virtually no one could argue that Whyte is due his shot at world title glory.
The Body Snatcher has stayed active and sat atop of the WBC rankings for years at this point. His title shot is way overdue.
And 20 percent sounds like the raw end of the deal, but for a huge, all-British heavyweight title showdown, it should still be a career payday if that’s what he’s forced to accept.
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