(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Scott Gilfoid: WBC super middleweight champion Sakio Bika (32-5-3, 21 KOs) will be getting the biggest purse in tonight’s Showtime fight card from the StubHub Center in Carson, California.
Bika is getting $700,000 to defend his title against unbeaten #6 WBC Anthony Dirrell (26-0-1, 22 KOs), according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. Bika’s adviser is Al Haymon, which would explain why he’s getting paid so well. Dirrell is getting paid well too. His purse for tonight is $500,000.
IBF welterweight champion Shawn Porter (24-0-1, 15 KOs) is getting $500,000 for his defense against Britain’s Kell Brook (32-0, 22 KOs) in the main event of the card. Brook is getting considerably less at $200,000.
It’s interesting that Brook is getting far less than Dirrell’s $500,000, but then again Dirrell is better known than Brook in the United States and he has an exciting fighting style that appeals to the U.S audience. Brook would likely be getting a bigger purse if he’d been fighting in the U.S on a regular basis against high caliber opposition during his career, But he’s spend almost his entire career fighting in the UK against less than dangerous opposition, and that’s kept him from being able to build a fan base in the U.S. I doubt that many casual boxing fans have ever even heard of Brook before in the U.S.
Heavyweight knockout artist Deontay Wilder (31-0, 31 KOs) is getting $50,000 for his fight against journeyman Jason Gavern in their scheduled 10 round fight on Showtime Extreme. Wilder would obviously be getting more money than that if he had been added to the fight card when it was first put together. But Deontay was added to the card 2 weeks ago, so there wasn’t room for him to be included in the televised portion.
Deontay’s purse later this year in his title challenge of WBC heavyweight champion Bermane Stiverne is going to look quite a bit different than the skimpy $50K he’s getting tonight. For that fight, you can expect Deontay to get $500K or more. If he captures the WBC crown, then his paydays are going to go up dramatically from there, especially if he’s able to hold onto the title for a long time like IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko.
WBC lightweight champion Omar Figueroa is getting $270,000 for his defense against #1 WBC Daniel Estrada. For his part, Estrada is getting $130,000.
Here are the full fight card purses via Dan Rafael’s twitter: “Carson card purses: Porter $500k, Brook 200k, Bika 700k, Dirrell 500, Figueroa 270, Estrada 130, Wilder 50, Gavern 32,500, Linares 5K, Terry 6,500.”
It doesn’t make much sense that lightweight contender Jorge Linares is making just $5,000 while his little known opponent Ira Terry is making more than him at $6,500.
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