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KOSTYA Tszyu: Show me the money
By GRANTLEE KIEZA
December 29, 2004
KOSTYA Tszyu wants a lot more than the $5.2 million being offered if he has to fly all the way to Manchester to hammer English hero Ricky Hatton in his next fight.
Yesterday Tszyu and his manager Matt Watt sat down at Kostya's Carss Park castle to consider a deal from England's leading promoter Frank Warren to fight Hatton next year. Watt stressed if the fight took place Warren would have to dig much deeper into his silk-lined pockets.
While Warren's American rival Murad Muhammad, who is offering Tszyu a four-fight deal worth nearly $20 million, labelled fighting in England a "crazy move", Watt refuted a report in Britain's Guardian newspaper yesterday that the IBF junior-welterweight champion was under pressure from American telecaster Showtime to take the fight.
"Kostya is under no pressure from Showtime," Watt said. "Showtime has always been very supportive of him.
"The pressure is being applied by Showtime on Kostya's promoter Vlad Warton to provide Kostya with a deal."
Watt said Tszyu had no qualms about fighting Hatton in Manchester even if it meant boxing at 4am for prime time audiences in the US.
But he was not about to make huge profits for others unless he was well compensated.
"At the end of the day the Manchester fight comes down to economics," Watt said. "The promoters are making a lot of additional money for themselves by staging the fight there.
"They get pay-per-view revenues out of the UK which will be enormous and the MEN Arena in Manchester will be chockablock.
"What the promoters have to do is show the champion why he should fight at four in the morning in the other guy's backyard. People are using Kostya's name to put an event on and the way it works is you have to take care of the talent. If we choose to fight Hatton in Manchester it will be because the deal makes sense not because we were forced into it."
While Warren has indicated to the British press that the Hatton deal is a foregone conclusion, Watt said negotiations had really only just begun and Hatton was just one of several options under review.
Tszyu faces being stripped of his IBF belt if he does not face Hatton by August, but Watt said Tszyu "had gone beyond belts".
"We want to keep the IBF belt, of course," he said. "But if Kostya was to fight Oscar De La Hoya for $10 million, there would not have to be a world title belt involved."
The race to sign Tszyu to a multi-million-dollar deal is a global adventure involving some of the most colourful characters in the most bizarre of sports.
The five main players are:
FRANK WARREN
Warren promotes the two biggest stars in England, Ricky Hatton and super-middleweight Joe Calzaghe, and says he has a verbal agreement with Tszyu's promoter Vlad Warton for a Tszyu-Hatton fight.
Brought up in a council flat overlooking a railway station, Warren ended up living in a house which once belonged to King Henry VIII.
His business style made him as many enemies as admirers and in 1989 he was shot four times at point blank range outside a fight club. One of his former world champs, Terry Marsh, was acquitted.
Warren spent weeks in intensive care and while he was out of action, his sporting empire went bust with debts of $120 million. But he fought back hard.
In 2000 he had a celebrated bust-up with Mike Tyson after promoting one of his fights in Glasgow. Tyson later denied newspaper reports that he had punched Warren or that he had threatened to throw him out of a seventh-storey window after the promoter refused to pay a bill of nearly $1 million Tyson had ticked up at a jewellery store.
VLAD WARTON
Russian born and Las Vegas- based Warton, is a former Parramatta Road used car salesman who became Tszyu's promoter after the world champion's costly split with his original backer Bill Mordey.
He says his love for the fight game began at the age of six when he translated for the Cuban amateur team in Chechnya. He came to Australia in 1973 aged 15.
MURAD MUHAMMAD
In 1991 the Nevada State Athletic Commission fined Muhammad $33,000 for taking part in a melee in the ring after the first Mike Tyson-Razor Ruddock fight. Film shows Muhammad kicking toward Tyson's trainer, Richie Giachetti, a former arsonist, who had been knocked to the canvas.
Last year boxing agent Sampson Lewkowicz, a former employee of Muhammad, filed a $4 million suit against him, alleging the brawny promoter "punched me in the face without provocation" at the IBF convention in Puerto Rico. DON KING
A former Cleveland gangster, King shot a man dead in self defence and kicked another to death over a $600 gambling debt. He once had his house blown up and survived a shotgun blast to the back of his own skull.
After getting out of jail on a manslaughter lag in the early '70s he formed an alliance with Muhammad Ali that bankrolled him as the biggest promoter in the game for three decades.
King remains keen to sign Tszyu for a fight with world welterweight champ Cory Spinks, whose father, Leon, once beat Ali. Tszyu tried to get the fight happening in May last year but negotiations broke down.
OSCAR DE LA HOYA
The richest boxer in history with earnings of more than $300 million, De La Hoya recently declared he wants to move back from the middleweight division to the welterweights.
"I would love Kostya Tszyu [as an opponent]," said De La Hoya, who made $40 million from his last bout, a loss to Bernard Hopkins.
"Kostya is definitely someone I want to fight."
By GRANTLEE KIEZA
December 29, 2004
KOSTYA Tszyu wants a lot more than the $5.2 million being offered if he has to fly all the way to Manchester to hammer English hero Ricky Hatton in his next fight.
Yesterday Tszyu and his manager Matt Watt sat down at Kostya's Carss Park castle to consider a deal from England's leading promoter Frank Warren to fight Hatton next year. Watt stressed if the fight took place Warren would have to dig much deeper into his silk-lined pockets.
While Warren's American rival Murad Muhammad, who is offering Tszyu a four-fight deal worth nearly $20 million, labelled fighting in England a "crazy move", Watt refuted a report in Britain's Guardian newspaper yesterday that the IBF junior-welterweight champion was under pressure from American telecaster Showtime to take the fight.
"Kostya is under no pressure from Showtime," Watt said. "Showtime has always been very supportive of him.
"The pressure is being applied by Showtime on Kostya's promoter Vlad Warton to provide Kostya with a deal."
Watt said Tszyu had no qualms about fighting Hatton in Manchester even if it meant boxing at 4am for prime time audiences in the US.
But he was not about to make huge profits for others unless he was well compensated.
"At the end of the day the Manchester fight comes down to economics," Watt said. "The promoters are making a lot of additional money for themselves by staging the fight there.
"They get pay-per-view revenues out of the UK which will be enormous and the MEN Arena in Manchester will be chockablock.
"What the promoters have to do is show the champion why he should fight at four in the morning in the other guy's backyard. People are using Kostya's name to put an event on and the way it works is you have to take care of the talent. If we choose to fight Hatton in Manchester it will be because the deal makes sense not because we were forced into it."
While Warren has indicated to the British press that the Hatton deal is a foregone conclusion, Watt said negotiations had really only just begun and Hatton was just one of several options under review.
Tszyu faces being stripped of his IBF belt if he does not face Hatton by August, but Watt said Tszyu "had gone beyond belts".
"We want to keep the IBF belt, of course," he said. "But if Kostya was to fight Oscar De La Hoya for $10 million, there would not have to be a world title belt involved."
The race to sign Tszyu to a multi-million-dollar deal is a global adventure involving some of the most colourful characters in the most bizarre of sports.
The five main players are:
FRANK WARREN
Warren promotes the two biggest stars in England, Ricky Hatton and super-middleweight Joe Calzaghe, and says he has a verbal agreement with Tszyu's promoter Vlad Warton for a Tszyu-Hatton fight.
Brought up in a council flat overlooking a railway station, Warren ended up living in a house which once belonged to King Henry VIII.
His business style made him as many enemies as admirers and in 1989 he was shot four times at point blank range outside a fight club. One of his former world champs, Terry Marsh, was acquitted.
Warren spent weeks in intensive care and while he was out of action, his sporting empire went bust with debts of $120 million. But he fought back hard.
In 2000 he had a celebrated bust-up with Mike Tyson after promoting one of his fights in Glasgow. Tyson later denied newspaper reports that he had punched Warren or that he had threatened to throw him out of a seventh-storey window after the promoter refused to pay a bill of nearly $1 million Tyson had ticked up at a jewellery store.
VLAD WARTON
Russian born and Las Vegas- based Warton, is a former Parramatta Road used car salesman who became Tszyu's promoter after the world champion's costly split with his original backer Bill Mordey.
He says his love for the fight game began at the age of six when he translated for the Cuban amateur team in Chechnya. He came to Australia in 1973 aged 15.
MURAD MUHAMMAD
In 1991 the Nevada State Athletic Commission fined Muhammad $33,000 for taking part in a melee in the ring after the first Mike Tyson-Razor Ruddock fight. Film shows Muhammad kicking toward Tyson's trainer, Richie Giachetti, a former arsonist, who had been knocked to the canvas.
Last year boxing agent Sampson Lewkowicz, a former employee of Muhammad, filed a $4 million suit against him, alleging the brawny promoter "punched me in the face without provocation" at the IBF convention in Puerto Rico. DON KING
A former Cleveland gangster, King shot a man dead in self defence and kicked another to death over a $600 gambling debt. He once had his house blown up and survived a shotgun blast to the back of his own skull.
After getting out of jail on a manslaughter lag in the early '70s he formed an alliance with Muhammad Ali that bankrolled him as the biggest promoter in the game for three decades.
King remains keen to sign Tszyu for a fight with world welterweight champ Cory Spinks, whose father, Leon, once beat Ali. Tszyu tried to get the fight happening in May last year but negotiations broke down.
OSCAR DE LA HOYA
The richest boxer in history with earnings of more than $300 million, De La Hoya recently declared he wants to move back from the middleweight division to the welterweights.
"I would love Kostya Tszyu [as an opponent]," said De La Hoya, who made $40 million from his last bout, a loss to Bernard Hopkins.
"Kostya is definitely someone I want to fight."
Somethings confusing me!!
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