By Jeff Aranow: Andre Berto will be getting a purse of $1.2 million for his WBC welterweight title eliminator fight against Shawn Porter this Saturday night at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. According to Dan Rafael, Porter’s purse for the fight is $1 million, which isn’t bad considering that he lost his last fight to Keith Thurman last June. The Berto-Porter fight will be televised on Showtime Championship Boxing.
The winner of the Berto vs. Porter fight will have a future fight against WBA/WBC champion Thurman.
In purses for the co-feature bout, WBC light middleweight champion Jermell Charlo’s purse will be $100,000 for his title defense against once beaten Charles Hatley. For his part, Hatley will be getting $85,000. Charlo (28-0, 13 KOs) could be a star in the future. It’s hard to imagine his purse being so much smaller than Porter and Berto’s. Charlo is a world champion. It’s still unclear whether Porter and Berto will ever win another world title in their careers.
Charlo, 26, has only been a world champion since last May when he beat John Jackson by an 8th round knockout. Charlo hasn’t fought since that time. That’s 11 months of inactivity for Charlo. To become a well-paid star in boxing, you need to stay busy by fighting frequently to build up a large fan base. Fighting once a year isn’t going to get it done for Charlo. Charlo needs to get his promoter to have fighting more frequently. If Charlo is going to be fighting just once a year, he could burn through his entire career in the matter of 7 or 8 fights.
Charlo also needs to face better opposition than Hatley. If that means pulling welterweights up in weight or middleweights down in weight, then so be it. Charlo needs to push his promoters to make the biggest fights possible against fighters from 147 to 160.
Berto (31-4, 24 KOs) was a good fighter during his day in holding world titles from 2008 to 2011, but he’s been a non-factor for the last 6 years of his career after losing to Victor Ortiz, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Robert Guerrero and Jesus Soto Karass.
Porter, 29, is a high level contender at 147, but he’s been beaten twice in the last three years in defeats to Kell Brook and Keith Thurman. Porter lost out on his best chance of winning another world title when Danny Garcia lost his WBC welterweight title to Thurman in losing a 12 round decision last March.
Porter would match up a lot better against Garcia than he would Thurman. There’s a chance that Porter and Thurman could face each other in the tail end of 2017. However, it’s doubtful that rematch will happen until 2018, because Thurman has a rematch with Danny Garcia that he’ll be getting out of the way first before he looks to face Porter again. Thurman isn’t likely going to fight 3 times in 2017, because of how grueling his fights are.
“Purses for Saturday’s card at Barclays Center: Berto $1.2M, Porter $1M, Charlo 100k, Hatley $85k, Serrano $12k, Santana $6k #boxing,” said Rafael on his Twitter.
999