The guy is an undefeated wrecking machine and he only made $1,543,950 last night and Smith BTW took home $571,050 for his purse. The guy needs to be fighting in MSG or Vegas, anywhere but Canada.
He isn't American but a Dagestani fighting outside of Canada He needs a better manager & promoter both Guys who produce garbage like Shakira Twitterson & Huggy Haney get paid a lot more because the hope from Hearn & Arum is to find the next Floyd (note that SOB Ward, Floyd, & Crawford even walked Shakira out for his last track meet) while guys who come to fight like Matias & Beterbiev get paid peanuts He will get far more vs Bivol as it will be in Saudi & he is a Muslim as well, well deserved 1 more reason that Saudi's are good for boxing if they can give paydays to fighters who come to fight while Americans can pay the guys who come to play tag & pretend they are saving the "sweet science". They started with Opetaia, next up Beterbiev, hoping they pick up Matias as with Inoue's fight against MJ expected to be in Saudi they show that they are interested in lower weights as well
How do you sell Eastern European guys in the U.S. organically? @Diagoras believes it's about something else but the guys he named have a built-in audience. Boxing doesn't even give credit to the guys who got moderate success out of the mud like Joe Smith Jr. whose an NY construction worker who boxed part time and became a champion. So how do you sell guys to a group of people who were told for 8-11 years of the beginning of their lives that the east was the enemy?
It went to purse bids. Top Rank bid 2.1m and narrowly beat Matchroom. The manager has nothing to do with it. The promoters put up the money.
This guy would be living a life style now that he could have only dreamed of living in Muslim Araes of Russia
Fair enough but they will pay fighters money for that while Hearn & Arum can continue to pay featherfisted American track stars & wrestlers It is nauseating to see someone like Shakira pushed so heavily (wasn't his mug displayed prominently during some ball game by TR in the lead up to the De Los Santos fight) while Matias fights to half empty arena's (like against Jukembayev) & boxing is labeled "pillow fighting" by the ignorant casuals, they wouldn't be saying that if they saw Matias or Beterbiev fight
It's a shame he's not a bigger star given his ability and utter domination. But many good even great fighters never capture the imagination of the wider public, for a number of reasons. It's the same with Bivol despite getting that fight with Canelo which exposed him to a wider audience that normally would have never watched him, he still isn't the star his talent warrants. In fact most of the best boxers don't get their due, Crawford and Inoue are not household names either while Joshua and Canelo are the big draws in boxing. It isn't always about the promoter or manager, they can only do so much, Crawford does little to promote himself and Beterbiev doesn't seem very extroverted or going out of his way to promote himself.
Inoue is (no not like Ohtani but boxing is niche in Japan as well), just not in the West & Japan is a strong enough economy that he can make a lot of money there Besides AJ, Fury, & Canelo he is probably the only one who can fill a stadium solely on his star power. Tokyo Dome which is said to be hosting his next fight has 55K capacity This content is protected If you know the public locations shown in this promo video, can't get anymore mainstream than that The last three matches have been held at Ariake Arena, which has a capacity of approximately 15,000 people, and the lottery for tickets to the match against Marlon Tapales on December 26th received over 100,000 applications, a record number. there were. Hideyuki Ohashi, chairman of Ohashi Gym, to which he belongs, said, ``People who want to come see us can't come.'' ``We are considering a larger venue for the next match. Tokyo Dome is an option.'' https://www.sanspo.com/article/20231229-MEWYIQLUSBMQZG45RGKWRQVDYQ/?outputType=theme_fight 100K is enough demand to do a successful stadium event
He'd make more money fighting in the UK. Search up the reception Khamzat Chimaev got here. And he's not even champ level in his sport.
Also after they picked up Opetaia, I am not so sure of this claim The fact is Jai isn't a star, an entertaining fighter & a belt holder (before dropping the IBF title) with the potential to be a star yes but not one when they signed him. He was known to the hardcores of course but even in Australia, Tim Tszyu is a bigger name The story I heard is that he was noticed by the Saudi's after the demolition job he did on Thompson in UK & he said that Turki had 1 on 1 lunch with him. May be they see a potential star there & that's why they are giving him their platform It is not like everyone in Saudi needs to care because Turki has a lot of say on what goes on & if he is an actual boxing fan, that matters a whole lot
Like I said before, Haney earned the same amount for facing a completely washed much smaller old inactive Linares even though it was only his second fight at the world level, his first also coming against a old shot much smaller fighter, as Beterbiev and Gvozdyk did for facing prime versions of each other in a unification match up. Haney has a very boring style and is almost as boring out of the ring, Beterbiev is an exciting wrecking machine with elite skills who never fails to get the finish and whilst he's a softly spoken deeply religious family man he's very charismatic with a great sense of humour and he exudes real menace without even having to try to do so. Gvozdyk is an exciting boxer puncher with a high KO percentage himself (80%) who usually gets his opponents out of there in HL reel or impressive fashion and he's very articulate, intelligent and unlike Haney he's very handsome too. Haney isn't more skilled than either of them and he's infinitely more boring to watch. Bivol has more in common with Haney when it comes to excitement or rather lack thereof but he's not running, holding and stinking out the joint like Haney. Bivol is actually very aggressive and unlike Haney he's not a massive weight bully who is being taken the distance by old shot chinny leprechauns or fighters he weighs 2-4 divisions more than, he's smallish for the weight and is fighting opponents bigger or much bigger than him the vast majority of the time and most of them are very durable.
