Often in boxing we don't see good fights get made because someone wants more money, or wants to fight in their hometown, or whatever other stupid excuse you could conjure (I know, I know, they need to make a living too, but we're fans, we're supposed to ***** about it.) So I ask, which fighters accepted an insulting offer just for the chance to chase glory?
Pac vs Ledwaba. In Pac's first U.S. fight, he took on the heavily favored Ledwaba on 2 weeks notice for $40,000.
At the end of the day, it's always about money. The athletes wouldn't even make those stupid demands if they didn't have swelled heads and entitlement issues. Olympic athletes are given no money and they have to fight the best. If you don't fight the best, then you don't get a medal, and you can't brag about being the best while hiding from your competition. In the pro ranks, we give belts for fighting journeymen, and with the belt comes tons of money. We actually incentivize athletes not to fight the best. We incentivize them to seek out easily won belts and hold them hostage against bums. Also, the Olympic model works because there aren't five different ranking organizations who won't rank each others champions. There's just one organization with a clear competitive bracket. High ranked fighters aren't even given the option to fight a low ranked fighter. You qualify and are given an assessment and matched according to your strength and the lower guys get weeded out early on, so top guys have to face other top guys to advance. There's no negotiation. No A side B side bull****. There are no promoters who won't work with each other, no television contracts that stipulate a fighter can only fight for one network. Take the money out of sports and you make them clean again.
Great post, especially the part about encouraging fighters to face lesser competition when holding a title.
Was that not a career payday or close to it at that point for him, though? He didn't really start becoming a big international star until after beating Ledwaba.
7k versus Sasakul, and one point five million Filipino pesos versus Skinny Hussein. (in today's exchange rate, the Filipino peso is worth about two and fifteen-hundredths of a cent in USD. Back in 2000, it was a little stronger, running for 2 cents and one-quarter of a cent. That is, 0.02154243860405 and 0.022627608397558, respectively. In other words, today you need 46.42 pesos to equal a buck, and in 2000 you needed 44.1938 to do the same. In other words, in 2000, the purse Muhammad secured for Pac versus Hussein was just shy of 34k in USD, though he did tack on another fifty thousand pesos for 'training expenses'...giving Pac a $35,000 grand total, give or take fifty bucks) Those and Singsurat (for which I can't find any purse info) were his biggest matches prior to Ledwaba.
I think people missed my point, it's all relative. And RELATIVE is the important term here. For example, Fighter A offers Fighter B a measly 10%, but Fighter B accepts it anyway, despite feeling insulted, for a chance to dethrone A. Folks mention Pacquiao and Kovalev, those are more "rags to riches" stories rather than taking insulting offers to get the glory.
Canelo-Cotto would fit the spirit of the thread if one were to go solely from U.S. PPV splits. Of course, Canelo can afford to take smaller cuts of the U.S. pie because he has Mexican TV networks in a bidding war over his fights every few bouts.
