Parker’s promoter wants 60-40 split for Joshua fight

By Boxing News - 11/13/2017 - Comments

Image: Parker’s promoter wants 60-40 split for Joshua fight

By Scott Gilfoid: Anthony Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn will need to give WBO heavyweight champion Joseph Parker a 60-40 split of the revenue if he wants a unification fight with him in 2018. Parker’s promoter David Higgins says he an embarrassingly low offer from Hearn for the Joshua fight. Higgins says he’s not going to accept the offer, and he’s ready to give up on the fight.

Higgins says they’ll accept nothing less than a 60-40 deal for the Joshua fight. If Team Parker doesn’t get the 60-40 deal, they’ll wait for Deontay Wilder to beat Joshua in 2018, and then face him in a 50-50 deal.

Higgins isn’t saying what the offer is, but it’s obviously well below the 40% split of the loot that he wants for Parker. Previously, Higgins mentioned an 80-20 offer Hearn had made to Parker, which was totally unsuitable.

”They pay us 40 per cent and not a cent less, or they will fight Wilder, who will obviously win and then we’ll fight Wilder 50-50,” said Higgins to skysports.com. “If they want to go fight Wilder, they can, and then we’ll fight Wilder on a 50-50 basis later in the year, once he has all three belts.”

This is what many boxing fans were afraid of when Hearn began negotiations for the Joshua vs. Parker fight. Hearn doesn’t seem too interested in giving Parker the offer that he and his promoter Higgins want from him for the Joshua unification fight. Higgins didn’t say what the current offer is from Hearn, but it’s got to be quite low for him to be venting like this.

Hearn might not have realized going into the negotiations with Parker and Higgins that they would want a fair deal to fight Joshua. Hearn appears to be stuck on the idea that Joshua is the A-side in the negotiations, and as such, he can offer Parker a lower percentage than what he wants. The problem is Hearn is dealing with a world heavyweight champion, and he’s not going to take a small percentage of the loot in order to fight Joshua. If Parker wasn’t a world champion, then you would expect Hearn to use his negotiating muscle to get a lopsided revenue split in favor of Joshua. That’s not the case though. Parker holds the World Boxing Organization heavyweight title, and he and his promoter Higgins aren’t going to be agreeable to taking chump change for a fight with Joshua.

If Hearn isn’t able to get Parker to agree to fight Joshua next year, then he’s going to need to start planning on finding another opponent for him to fight in the first quarter of next year. This might be a good time for Hearn to finally match Joshua against Dillian Whyte in a rematch. The two of them fought 2 years ago in 2015, and there are some boxing fans out there that wouldn’t mind seeing them fight again. Whyte would be a good Plan-B option for Joshua to fight if Hearn can’t get Parker to agree to accept less than 40 percent of the money.

Higgins says Parker could face former WBA heavyweight champion Lucas Browne if they can’t get the unification fight against Joshua like they want.