Yvon Michel, promoter for WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson, has hired back at the recent statements that were made by Virgil Hunter, the head trainer of IBF, WBA, WBO light heavyweight champion Andre Ward (32-0, 16 KOs) - who two weeks ago announced his retirement from the sport.
According to Hunter, there was simply no money in a fight with Stevenson. Ward had made high seven figure paydays for both Sergey Kovalev bouts and wasn't willing to take a step back in the pay department when it came to Stevenson or anyone else.
"Well, Stevenson can only fight in Canada and there was really no money in that fight. Nobody put up the money for that fight, and once you make a certain amount of money, it’s only right that you continue to stay on that pay scale. Stevenson was not going to bring in that kind of money to the table because he only fights in Canada," Hunter told On The Ropes Boxing Radio.
Michel disagrees. He believes a fight with Stevenson would have made Ward even more money than either of the undefeated Olympian's pay-per-view bouts with Kovalev.
"So he is claiming there was not enough money for the fight and Ward would have been paid less than his fights with Kovalev. We all know Ward was way overpaid for his fights with Kovalev. In a 50/50 split deal with Kovalev, on all revenues produced by the events, Ward would have got less than half the money he was paid. In fact, Ward’s purse alone was more than the total revenues generated by the events," Michel explained to BoxingScene.com.
"The reason he was paid that much was because the generosity of his own promoter Roc Nation who subsidized him with millions to convince him to take the fights. Ward's gains over the 50% of all incomes of the event were his promoter’s losses. A promoter can’t do that kind of business forever if he wants to stay in the business.
"It is obvious a Stevenson-Ward event would have generated more total revenues than each of the two Ward-Kovalev fights because it would have been about the same in USA and international sales but the Canadian market would have contributed several millions in PPV sales, something that was not there for the two Ward-Kovalev events. But even the Canadian contribution would not have been enough to satisfied the needs of Ward who would have requested, according to Virgil Hunter, more money to fight Stevenson. We know now that his promoter was no longer interested to subsidizing his purse.
"Andre Ward was an exceptional fighter a great personality and a model for the youth. He brought dignity, respect and was an asset for boxing. But he was not a popular fighter in term of ticket sales and PPV. As the obvious A side in the fight against Stevenson it would have been his responsibility to generate revenues in USA at the level of other stars like Mayweather, Pacquiao, Alvarez and Cotto - if he wanted to be paid at their level. That was not the case.
"On top of that Stevenson is a much more complete fighter then Sergey Kovalev, much higher boxing HQ, much better inside fighter in his southpaw style. Stevenson posed a much greater danger to blemish Ward’s perfect record. The equation made by Ward’s team was - 'greater risk and overall less money' and the decision was made to retire.
"So it is ridiculous now to try to twist the story and try to blame the dangerous WBC champion Adonis Stevenson. The fact Adonis is fighting from Canada would only have been a great asset in term of revenues for that fight no matter where it would have been held, not the other way around."
