It doesn’t look great in my opinion. How much money do these people actually want. You can argue both sides too. Why doesn’t Fury accept 50/50, why doesn’t Usyk except 60/40. They are both still huge pots of money.
Fury believes he deserves more money than Usyk, and possibly more money than what the Saudi's had offered Joshua, or something along those lines. Fury, of course, deserves more than Usyk. Fury is the superstar, but who can blame Usyk for believing he is of equal worth? He is potentially as good of a boxer and with his achievements he will feel that he is deserving of equal, but commercially he is Fury's subordinate and that poses complications. 40 - 40, winner takes the remaining 20%. It surprises me that this is not more prevalent in boxing.
If money is the issue, it’ll be because Fury wants more than whatever the Saudis paid Joshua. Fury isn’t as big commercially as Joshua, despite being the better fighter, so he won’t get such an offer. Hearn alluded to this a few days ago, and I think he’s right on this. On principle, it seems pretty obvious it should be an even split. But commercially it’s not realistic because Fury has a bigger profile than Usyk. It’s annoying, but that’s how modern boxing is. If it isn’t announced over the weekend, I agree it looks unlikely for April. I am holding out hope that it’s going to be announced at the Paul - Fury fight.
"Per [url]Sports Zion[/url], Paul will make about $3.2 million for the Fury bout. That is before adding profits from the 65% PPV share he will earn (totaling $8.6 million)." "During their first encounter, Joshua took home about $13.6 million (plus 60 percent of the PPV revenue), while Usyk earned $4.1 million (plus 40 percent of the PPV revenue)." This is just wrong - having Jake Paul equally or better paid than Usyk and I mean Usyk against a champ and a commercial guy as AJ is sick.
This is boxing, you earn what you can generate, it's always been this way. One of the symptoms of having zero stricture.
If I was negotiating this one I’d get em all around a table and say LOOK LADS let’s see the bigger picture here eh, do you want a % of a monster pot or do you want a bigger % of eff all? then I’d wait for the penny to drop, give em all a knowing NOD and a WINK then I’d pull the old BAIT and SWITCHER… “how about 60% each lads, what do you say?”
We've all suspected Fury just doesn't fancy the Usyk fight and nothing that's happened suggests otherwise.
Yeah, I am recently posting about and how wrong that is - being more of a business than sport, but it's for decades. On top of that, we've several sanctioning bodies with no principles and that's what we've got.
I would imagine Usyk has principles though and would deny Fury the fight unless the money's fair. Fury might be the draw but there's no undisputed fight without Usyk, assuming Fury actually wants to be undisputed... "lineal" seems enough for him
It's just I don't get it how Usyk agreed to split 50:50 with Joshua in their rematch - he was the champ and outclassed him.