Purses: Santa Cruz $1M, Frampton $500K

By Boxing News - 07/29/2016 - Comments

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(Photo credit Amanda Westcott/SHOWTIME) By Dan Ambrose: WBA featherweight champion Leo Santa Cruz (32-0-1, 18 KOs) will be getting $1 million purse on Saturday night for his title defense against Irish fighter Carl Frampton (22-0, 14 KOs) at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Frampton, who is coming all the way from Northern Ireland for the fight, will be getting half as much as Santa Cruz at $500,000.

It’s not bad money for Frampton, but I’m betting that he’s thinking of the much bigger paydays he can receive in the future if he beats Santa Cruz to win his WBA belt.

Saturday night’s Santa Cruz – Frampton fight card’s start time is at 7:00 p.m. ET/PT for Showtime. The location of the fight is at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

In the co-feature fight, former two-division world champion Mikey Garcia (34-0, 28 KOs) will be getting a purse of $375,000 for his fight against Elio Rojas (24-2, 14 KOs).

Rojas is getting a guaranteed $75,000. That’s not very much money for the kind of punishment that Rojas will likely be taking on Saturday night against Garcia. Mikey should be getting huge paydays by this point in his career, but the time out of the ring in the last two and a half years has really taken a bite out of his payday.

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If Garcia can get back to fighting on a regular basis and winning his fights, then he’ll probably see his paydays increase in the future. Mikey should be getting more money than Santa Cruz at this point in his career given the hype surrounding his career, but he’s not been active and that really hurts his earning potential.

Former two–division world champion Paulie Malignaggi (35-7, 7 KOs) will be getting $150,000 for his 10 round fight against Gabriel Bracero (24-2, 5 KOs) in their fight on Showtime Extreme. Bracero will be getting $55,000. This will be at welterweight. Earlier on Friday, Malignaggi weighed in at 146 ½ pounds. Bracero weighed in at 148.

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Malignaggi is used to getting bigger paydays than this. However, the 35-year-old Malignaggi’s record in his last five fights is 2-3 with his only two wins coming against little known Lazko Fazekas and Antonio Moscatiello. Malignaggi is no longer taking on contenders in the 147lb division, so it’s not all that surprising that his paydays have dropped off.

For Malignaggi to get his purses back up to what he used to get in the past, he’s going to need to start proving that he can beat world class opposition like he did in the past. Malignaggi is talking about wanting to move down to lightweight in the near future to see if he can compete with the best in that division. However, it’s going to be tough for him to drop down to 135 to make that happen. Malignaggi might not even beat Bracero on Saturday. If he loses to him, then he probably needs to pack it in and retire from the sport.

#8 IBF Sergey Rabchenko (27-1, 29 KOs) will be getting $30,000 for his IBF junior middleweight title eliminator fight against #13 IBF Tony Harrison (23-1, 19 KOs). Harrison is getting $85,000 despite the fact that he’s ranked higher than Harrison by the IBF. Harrison was recently knocked out in the 9th round last year by Willie Nelson.