Please don't take this as an "I don't believe you" reply - would you care to tell one of the stories, without naming a particular boxer?
Yes, of course. A few years ago, there was an up and coming UK boxer who entered into an agreement with a promoter that he would be paid in proportion to how many tickets he sold, so he went out into the streets and put up posters and made a lot of PR work before the fight. The family also helped along with friends and acquaintances. They managed to sell a total of approx. 3000 tickets, but when he was to be paid after the fight, he was told by the promoter that he had only sold approx. 1000 tickets and it was unfortunately not enough for it to be financially sustainable. It ended with the boxer not getting any payment after a huge amount of work. I know of cases where the home boxer has been equipped with very thin fine gloves, while the away boxer's gloves were thick and padded. If you want more examples, just ask. The list is endless.
What do we reckon? Does okolie try and fight opetaia and makabu for the other titles or does he move up to heavyweight instead next?
It is a business decision. From a fan perspective I think he would beat both handily. Makabu's WBC reign has been a farce and he wasn't very good against Bellew, was he? How he's ended up holding the WBC belt at 35 or 36 is quite something.
Very good, thank you - and at the same time, these stories are sadly both ridiculous and predictable. So in the first example, the boxer himself sold 3,000 tickets but got paid zilch? I could give you stories in reverse about football clubs - where the club had 1,000 fans through the gate at £10 each. After the game some mystery character dumped Tesco bags of used notes on the boardroom table, said "there's today's gate money" and it was over £50,000 when counted out. Other clubs at the top level in Scotland where the gate money went on the boardroom table and got dipped into before the club saw any of it. Sport is rotten eh?
I guess it depends on how he is at the weight. Surely he has a great chance to unify given the belt holders, undisputed even?
There's no decent fights to be had at Cruiser, nobody cares enough about that division at the moment because there's no stars in it anymore or at least names that sell tickets or people have interest in. If he quickly got fights sorted to unify the division within a year then go for it and then move up but that won't happen so he's best to move up rather than waste a couple of years and then beat a load of Molina types before an all British clash with someone, there's enough British heavyweights around at the moment.
It is correct. The boxer got nothing. The promoter took all the money. Also know of a case where a UK Promoter told a boxer that if he took a fight for a low purse then he would receive an envelope with a large sum of black money. After the fight, the promoter did not think the boxer had done well enough, so the boxer was not given an envelope with the black money. Yes, the boxing industry / sports business is unfortunately rotten.
Shane McGuigan has said he doesn't know if he's training Okolie anymore as he's fooked off to live in Dubai.
Got to stick up for Matchroom and, of course, Joshua, at all costs, eh @Brixton Bomber @BEATDOWNZ @Pezee