FAO Deontay Wilder: Floyd's Shown You How to Make a Mega Fight

[Stinger1]

Anthony Joshua is going to end up with the bigger split of the take, but your example completely ignores the fact that Anthony Joshua is the Brit, Deontay Wilder is the American, and the money on the fight will be biggest for everyone involved with the fight in the US.

Anthony Joshua in the US vs Deontay Wilder in the US, commercially speaking, isn't anywhere near the washout that you're projecting.

Floyd ended up seeing $25m on the ODLH fight, after everything was counted.

If Matchroom/Joshua want to follow that framework, fine; Wilder gets $4m, Joshua gets $20m, and then you throw the Sky Box Office, RTL, French TV money in with the SHOPPV money, the money from Canadian PPV, the money from Mexico, the rest of the international TV money, and the money to come from the live event.

The final proceeds on the fight will end up being well more than $40m anyway, so you'd still have all of that money to divvy up.

Floyd and Oscar ended up splitting something like $100m on their fight; do you think either fighter gave a **** about waiting to double up (triple up in Oscar's case) what they were guaranteed?

Hearn and Haymon/Finkell are hammering out the deal, Showtime/CBS have massive interest in the fight, and MGM Resorts likely being involved in hosting will launch the event into t the stratosphere.

Slow up before you start talking ****.

You and others have completely missed the point so I will attempt to clarify.

Simply, Floyd took 28% guaranteed purse ($10m) and ended up with 33% ($25m) of the final pot. Floyd's previous highest purse (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) was $8m against Carlos Baldomir. Oscar's highest purse which was $21m + share of $11m PPV (couldn't find exact number) was against Trinidad. So lets it was $32 to make the math easy. Oscar's highest payday was 4x Floyd's. And yet Floyd only took 33% of the final pot.

Here we have Wilder who as the A side can't generate more than $2m by himself while AJ can generate $15m, 7.5x what Wilder makes. And yet not only is he asking for a higher % of what Floyd took against De La Hoya despite earning proportionally less money, he wants 50/50!

If we were to use Floyd vs Oscar as a model for what the split should be based on the split and previous high paydays, Wilder should only be getting 17.6% which is probably about the amount of money he's bringing to the fight.

[Scipio2009]

Agreed, I think that's the strategy and I think they'll try and build that narrative using the Brezeale fight and maybe Ortiz as well as a staging post. Maybe they get the cut through and Vegas takes the bait.




I'm sure he wants all the plaudits available and a place in the pantheon of boxing's greats. I'm sure he wants Deontay's belt to add to his collection. I'm also sure he wants to get paid £100m plus. He can do the latter of these things with or without the co-operation of Deontay Wilder and whilst Wilder has fought no-one of note his absence from Joshua's resume isn't going to weigh heavily if Joshua has taken on Klitschko. Fury and a bunch of other top ranked contenders.

Floyd Mayweather Jr made a billion dollars in the boxing ring; from the Cornish fight on (not really sure when Anthony Joshua stepped to being the main event of the show) he's likely closer to that £100m mark than folks realize already.

The heat of the UK boxing scene is fun to watch, but Anthony Joshua has the potential to be the second billion dollar boxer and he's not going to be able to achieve that by not breaking through in the US market.

If the Joshua-Wilder (or Wilder-Joshua, who honestly cares) fights play out right (two barnburner skilled slugfests), Anthony Joshua could literally end up on something near $100m per fight until his run ends.

You don't get anywhere near that with Fury, Haye, or any other non-Wilder name you want to put out there (would withhold judgement on a Wladimir rematch, but even that may not have the juice to launch, with Klitschko being an aged fighter).

[Scipio2009]

Money is money regardless of where it comes for. AJ is earning $15-20M per fight regardless who he fights. Wilder just earned $1.4M. Wilder needs him more than he needs Wilder. Way more.

Wilder is the only fight out there that helps Joshua break Las Vegas, which would push him up to $30m-$40m per fight, regardless of who he fights.

Money is money, regardless of where it comes from. They need each other, and the sport needs them to need each other.

They need to hash out the deal, and get the fight done.

Maybe it's looking too far ahead but Joshua could literally spend the next 3-4 years (depending on how his body holds up with the camps) having two Vegas fights and a UK/Europe stadium fight every year.

[sunny31]

You and others have completely missed the point so I will attempt to clarify.

Simply, Floyd took 28% guaranteed purse ($10m) and ended up with 33% ($25m) of the final pot. Floyd's previous highest purse (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) was $8m against Carlos Baldomir. Oscar's highest purse which was $21m + share of $11m PPV (couldn't find exact number) was against Trinidad. So lets it was $32 to make the math easy. Oscar's highest payday was 4x Floyd's. And yet Floyd only took 33% of the final pot.

Here we have Wilder who as the A side can't generate more than $2m by himself while AJ can generate $15m, 7.5x what Wilder makes. And yet not only is he asking for a higher % of what Floyd took against De La Hoya despite earning proportionally less money, he wants 50/50!

If we were to use Floyd vs Oscar as a model for what the split should be based on the split and previous high paydays, Wilder should only be getting 17.6% which is probably about the amount of money he's bringing to the fight.

I get the point, I made the same one a while back. Floyd also took less against Gatti, he made these moves because he needed to do these things to become a crossover star. Think at the time, he was the p4p 1 and he took a 40-60 split against Gatti.

But he did what he had to do, played his position and it worked out.

Wilder is an idiot, and so are the people who claim Joshua should just give these guys what they want to make the fights happen.

[Scipio2009]

You and others have completely missed the point so I will attempt to clarify.

Simply, Floyd took 28% guaranteed purse ($10m) and ended up with 33% ($25m) of the final pot. Floyd's previous highest purse (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) was $8m against Carlos Baldomir. Oscar's highest purse which was $21m + share of $11m PPV (couldn't find exact number) was against Trinidad. So lets it was $32 to make the math easy. Oscar's highest payday was 4x Floyd's. And yet Floyd only took 33% of the final pot.

Here we have Wilder who as the A side can't generate more than $2m by himself while AJ can generate $15m, 7.5x what Wilder makes. And yet not only is he asking for a higher % of what Floyd took against De La Hoya despite earning proportionally less money, he wants 50/50!

If we were to use Floyd vs Oscar as a model for what the split should be based on the split and previous high paydays, Wilder should only be getting 17.6% which is probably about the amount of money he's bringing to the fight.

Wilder can say whatever he wants; Haymon and Finkell are negotiating the actual deal.

With all of the different revenue streams coming in, I doubt that a straight-up split of everything makes sense tbh (UK TV having massive value, MGM Resorts bidding against Wembley, Showtime possibly debating SHOPPV vs putting the fight on CBS, etc).

In the end, a package will get done that everyone can live with, whether Wilder and Joshua are guaranteed $1m or $10m as their day-of check.

[sunny31]

Wilder is the only fight out there that helps Joshua break Las Vegas, which would push him up to $30m-$40m per fight, regardless of who he fights.

Money is money, regardless of where it comes from. They need each other, and the sport needs them to need each other.

They need to hash out the deal, and get the fight done.

Maybe it's looking too far ahead but Joshua could literally spend the next 3-4 years (depending on how his body holds up with the camps) having two Vegas fights and a UK/Europe stadium fight every year.

I'm not convinced that this fight is big enough to take to the US. Nor am I convinced that it will do any kind of numbers on US ppv, neither fighter has a track record on US ppv.

I think they could have taken Joshua vs Klitschko to Vegas and it would have been relatively successful because Klitschko has fought in the US and is a name.

I honestly think Wilder vs Joshua needs building.

[lakerstekkenn]

We have 2 heavy weight champions with 99% knock out power and people love the big boys fighting, even more then the little boys, they will pay to watch the fight.

Now you have to build the mega fight up with both fighters on the same card, like Floyd and Canelo did.

Once non diehard fight fans get to know who these 2 champions are, you can sell the fight to everyone.

Until then they have to build the mega fight up, make the fight and bring in Billions of dollars like MCgregor and Floyd did and they all can get even richer.

Until then they both will talk trash and make up stories about whose duckling who and talk even more trash about each others wives, mothers, kids and anything they can think of and their fans will do the same.

[Scipio2009]

I'm not convinced that this fight is big enough to take to the US. Nor am I convinced that it will do any kind of numbers on US ppv, neither fighter has a track record on US ppv.

I think they could have taken Joshua vs Klitschko to Vegas and it would have been relatively successful because Klitschko has fought in the US and is a name.

I honestly think Wilder vs Joshua needs building.

Joshua is almost set to fight Joseph Parker in the early spring (they'll find a stadium in UK/Europe somewhere for that fight because the sticker shock of putting Joshua back into a 20k-seat venue will likely leave a bad taste in fans' mouths) and the whispers are that Wilder-Ortiz is being lined up for that same early spring. More building right there.

You add that the doldrums of the summer is a real thing and you can basically build the fight even further from after Kentucky Derby weekend all the way through till NCAAF/NFL preseason in early September/late August.

With the fight already in the works, you can wait for the likely Alvarez-Golovkin 2 PPV on Cinco De Mayo, have the re-air sit on HBO the next Saturday, and start the tour that following Friday.

LA, NYC, Atlanta, Houston, Chicago, Las Vegas, Montreal, Berlin/Hamburg, Cardiff/Manchester, London.

Spread out over 10 dates, and you hit all the media centers needed to get the buzz up for the event.

Have All Access run in the run-up to the fight (three episodes plus the epilogue), and you're set.

[RJJ-94-02=GOAT]

I don't draw this distinction between Wilder fans and AJ fans, indeed I find a lot of this tribalism tedious. Not interested in attacking the perceptiveness of either camp, there'll be a fair share of idiots in either. The point is simply that AJ can afford to put enough money down to put the ball back in Wilder's court. If he's sure he beats him then why not take the $10m?



The point is £100m+ in revenue to bank, knowing that Wilder or whoever finally knocks him out will still be there when the cheques are cashed.



My original point is that much of this supposed strength from Wilder is not supported by the evidence. Either in viewing figures, gate receipts or any other metric you choose to gauge relative marketing pull. Does Wilder really deliver the US market in the way you suggest? That's not yet clear, in fact there's an argument that AJ is responsible for much of the interest on the other side of the Atlantic also, even if its based on US fans thinking he needs to be taken down. That's how Floyd built his earnings after all.

In private, away from the nonsense, my guess is that Haymon and Hearns are in basic agreement that some ground work needs to be done for this fight to reach its potential. If AJ Wilder opens the US up to AJ then presumably it needs to take place in Vegas at a time conducive to the US PPV market. Then enough interest needs to be built to make up for the loss of 90k capacity Wembley and UK PPV. That may mean that the overall pie isn't a great deal bigger than AJ is already generating in the UK, which means the question of rev share becomes ever more acute. Maybe AJ is willing to forgo some of that to extend his reach in the US, not sure about that though.

Alternatively the fight is in the UK, in which case Wilder really doesn't have much justification for asking for as much as 40% because over here he's a far lesser draw than Fury or even Haye.

I agree about the tribalism, I don’t really have a horse in the race myself, but I think it’s glaringly obvious the majority of AJ fans are casual based, that’s mainly because boxing relies on the casual fan base to draw numbers. I mean take his last fight for example, how many of the 75,000 there had heard or seen Takam before.

The gate in Vegas is waaay bigger than the gate in Wembley due to insanely inflated ticket prices. I think if it happens in either it’ll still draw numbers in the US. But from my perspective it’s better suited taking place in Vegas to be as you say conductive with US PPV. I don’t think the UK market will suffer all that much, Mayweather-Hatton still did massive UK numbers and Floyd-Conor is the highest selling UK PPV of all time.
You make a fair point Wilder is not a proven draw yet, certainly PPV wise, he draws solid numbers on network tv but nothing amazing. However, out of all the current HW’s he is the number one draw in the US, per tv ratings, I’m convinced a fight against a big star like AJ would capture the US public’s attention. As for Haye and Fury I don’t really think they’re feasible fights for 2018. That’s why I think if AJ wants to have a super fight in 2018 he has to fight Wilder.
AJ is the A-Side and the proven draw but so was Canelo, he was drawing 1m PPV buys to GGG 100k buys but he still realised that without GGG there was no super fight. That’s why they have to offer Wilder a fair deal, even if they go 60-40 and AJ gets an increased percentage on UK PPV like Hatton got vs Mayweather. They BOTH NEED this fight IMO and they have to make it happen.

[The Big Dunn]

For those not old enough to remember, the Anthony Joshua-Deontay Wilder situation isn't without precedent. Floyd before he was "Money" was an emerging PPV star and considered P4P the best. Oscar was the biggest name in boxing after Roy wasn't Roy anymore and Tyson had retired.

So this is how the negotiations went down, which was detailed in this article.

Terms were not disclosed, but both sides said that the fighters will make career-high purses. In De La Hoya's case, that means more than $25 million. For Mayweather, it means at least $10 million. Both will probably earn much more than that if the pay-per-view is a hit.

"We are just glad we were able to come to the agreement," Ellerbe said. "Oscar is a great businessman, him and Richard both. The negotiations were smooth. We didn't have any problems. This is about giving the fans what they want. And it's about Floyd's legacy in the sport. Floyd wants to go down as the best ever and Oscar is the biggest name in the sport."

There you have it, even though the gap commercially between Floyd and Oscar was much smaller than Deontay and AJ, Floyd took 28% of the guaranteed money. IF Wilder is what he says he is, then, like Floyd he would take AJ's terms to prove himself.

But as AJ said this guy is just a belt seller. There is nothing wrong with that except lying about it and saying you're something you're not.

Good post. Makes sense. The only thing to figure out is will it make more in Wembley or Las vegas. My guess is Vegas even though its far less seats.

I just hope the fight happens in the next 6-9 months. HWT is very hot right now and I want to keep the momentum going because its good for the sport when the HWT division is live and poppin.