Has Higher Purses Resulted in Weak Fights?

[Raonic]

Of course. Half of these guys think a fight between the top 2 division title holders are PPV fights.

[jqSide]

Santa Cruz wanted $2 mil when asked to fight Rigo. What else do you expect? Haymon gave him $750K twice for the 2 sparring partners he fought without Santa even asking. Same Leo guy who kept calling out the Cuban in his post fight interviews.

Quillin wanted $5-10 mil for a Golovkin fight, and so on and so forth.

[Tony Trick-Pony]

My answer to the question is yes.

There's examples all over the place where Lomo made $750k for an undercard fight vs a scrub, or Lara making $1mill vs a retired WW, or Quillin making around a mill for that Austalian kid. The market value of those fights would never be able to support those paydays. These guys sit back and fight infrequently without having to worry about stepping up b/c they're getting taken care of.

Alot of fighters like Jermall Charlo are getting paid so high, that when a tough fight like J-Rock does come around, the payday is high, but only slightly higher than the ridiculous amount he's currently getting for fighting scrubs. He has a low incentive and a wise-business sense tells him not to risk it.

Exactly.

Why step up the opposition if you're getting paid a million a fight to beat up nobodies?

I'm not blaming the fighters at all.

But whoever is overpaying is going to ruin many of them. When that big money quits, they may just find a safer profession and that's a waste of talent.