Isnt this how it should be? wouldnt it settle all this stupid "im A side" ****? Cuz if you lose you arguably aint "A side" anymore. It would also put an end to fighters getting as much high reward low risk situations. What do you think?
It would if there were a standard prize for every event and the percent to a winner and loser were fixed. But boxing functions like a branch of the entertainment business. How much a fighter earns is proportional to how popular he is, not how good he is. Thus the revenue which generates the purse is accrued from fighters generating interest in their bouts. Fighters like Ward, Lara, and Rigondeaux are probably going to beat a lot of people they aren't as popular as, but they fight in a boring safety first defensive style. They aren't draws. Their skills don't generate revenue. In the case of Lara and Rigondeaux, they probably don't even speak English well enough to hype a fight on talk shows and social media, which contributes to their anonymity. A guy like Canelo who lost to Lara deserves the bigger cut of the purse, because he brings many times as many viewers to the fight. He is a draw with an established and dependable audience. In other words, people don't come to see who the best fighter is. They come because they are fans of a particular fighter. It's the same as the studio system pays actors. Tom Cruise isn't as good of an actor as Daniel Day-Lewis but he sells more tickets and gets the higher salary. Also, when Tom Cruise opens a film, he tours his ass off giving interviews all over the world to make sure that people know his film is coming out and that they buy a ticket to see it. So he's able to increase revenue by generating interest in the product. Guys with lots of twitter followers or who are regulars on the big nightly talk shows can command a higher price, even if their acting skills are dog****. If your money is generated by how many people watch you in a theater or on television then you are in the entertainment business.
While i agree and 100% comprehend what you said, i still feel like that logic should only apply to money generated by PPV sales or regular broadcast ads. There should be a higher base amount of guaranteed pay that goes to the winner because in most cases he just dethroned the more popular fighter and put a dent in betting odds that favored the popular man.
B-side beats A-side in a lucrative fight - they have a rematch in which the B-side gets a far bigger share of the money.
I can sort of see an argument for a bonus. But to just set aside the reality of who is a draw and responsible for generating the revenue in the first place seems absurd. That seems like a disincentive for popular fighters to fight good competition. If one guy is the reason 9/10ths of the crowd shows up you shouldn't give the majority of the purse to the winner if he lands an unlikely upset. But if you set aside maybe 10% of the total purse value, and the winner gets that on top of his contracted purse, I could see that. But this is a slippery slope type argument that ends naturally at a "winner take all" predicament and that's not fair either.
