Will Usyk Fight Kabayel or Vacate the WBC title?

Football is a poor comparison. Football fans regularly expect players to take pay cuts or turn down bigger contracts out of loyalty to the club or to help strengthen the team. Players who don't are often branded mercenaries.

Why doesn't Team Usyk simply make a purse bid that reflects what they believe their fighter is worth? If negotiations collapse, there's nothing stopping them from winning the purse bids themselves. Frank Warren isn't automatically guaranteed the promotional rights.

We shouldn't pretend the champion is automatically getting screwed by the mandatory system, either. We have the example of when the WBC already heavily favoured Fury (champion) over Whyte (interim & mando) in the purse split. If Team Usyk thinks the mandatory is commercially viable, they have every opportunity to prove it at purse bids.

It's also hardly surprising that many boxing fans have limited sympathy for the argument that Usyk shouldn't earn a few million less. Plenty have suffered life-changing injuries pursuing the sport they love. Against that backdrop, asking a champion to earn XX million instead of XX million doesn't strike many people as an outrageous expectation.

Nobody is asking Usyk to fight for peanuts. They're asking the undisputed champion to fulfil the obligations that come with holding the belts. If he doesn't want those obligations, he can vacate (again). Or, you know, just retire already.

 

True, it can be a soulless sport, but many of thr athletes sure do a good job of hiding that. I also see a lot of ego, priding themselves on being the best and I don't think all of that is fake. I think if it is fake, it is hard to really motivate oneself to get to such a point. And I do think public praise means something to those fighters.

In the past, someone like joe louis spent a considerable amount of his money to support us efforts against nazi germany (and as a thank you lost everything he had when the us government pressed him for taxes on that...). And I think his whole career shows it was important for him how the public sees him. I have a similar impression of Patterson. Also noone can tell me muhammad ali wasn't keen on being seen in a positive light.

It's less the case now, but look at how much fury and joshua put into their public image. Sure, both profit monetarily, too - but I think all of us saw and continue to see how much fury dislikes to go into fights he might lose status in. See how hard it was to make the First usyk fight and also the joshua fight where many assume the problem is if he loses to joshua, his legacy is done.

So i think their legacy is immensely important for those guys (and it would be for me, too). And seeing they already own above 100 millions (some of them vastly more), it is just baffling to see them overriding their deeply personal valuation of their career and how it is seen in public, which was their concern for all of their lives, by the objective measure of money.

To me it seems like being hooked on a drug. Not making decisions on the same base as they did a few years back anymore. Just my Impression.

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But it might also just be that they want even more glory and eyes on them by doing the crossover fights and just don't value the hardcore fans as much as they do sheer numbers of eyes. Who knows. Might be the case with usyk. Also a sad scenario for me