By Barry Holbrook: Legendary promoter Don King has won the purse bid on Monday to stage the heavyweight contest between WBA ‘regular’ champion Manuel Charr and interim WBC belt holder Trevor Bryan. King, who is the promoter for Bryan (20-0, 14, KOs), won the purse bid with a $2 million bid, which easily out-did the next highest offer of $1.02 million Global Sports.
Possible locations for Charr vs. Bryan fight
The prospective date that King wants to stage the Charr vs. Bryan fight is on May 23 or 30. ESPN is saying that these are the potential places for the fight:
- Middle East – Saudi or Qatar
- Congo
- Las Vegas
Placing Charr-Bryan in the Congo seems like a bad fit because neither of the fighters are from that part of the world, and they’re not big stars. If this was Anthony Joshua, then okay, staging the fight in the Congo might work. Fans would come and see AJ, but it doesn’t make sense to stage Charr vs. Bryan over there. Charr was born in Beirut, Lebanon.
So if King wants to stage the fight in the Middle East, that wouldn’t be bad. One big problem with that is the fact that Charr isn’t a big star, and he probably won’t attract fans. Charr hasn’t fought in so long, and when he was competing, he wasn’t a successful heavyweight.
In the three times that Charr has stepped up a level during his 15-year professional career, he’s lost each time. Charr’s defeats have come against these fighters: Vitali Klitschko, Johann Duhaupas, Mairis Briedis, and Alexander Povetkin.
The 35-year-old Charr (31-4, 17 KOs) will getting $1.5 million compared to $500,000 fr his opponent Bryan. Charr hasn’t fought since winning the vacant WBA World heavyweight titles in beating Alexander Ustinov by a 12 round unanimous decision on November 25, 2017.
It’s interesting that the World Boxing Association didn’t step in already and strip Charr of his title due to his long period of inactivity. You can imagine the contenders in the WBA’s top 15 aren’t too happy that they’ve been sitting waiting for 3 years for Charr to make a defense. For a lot of contenders, it’s not worth it to wait on a title shot at the ‘regular’ WBA title.
Trevor Bryan hasn’t fought since 2018
It’s not just Charr that has been inactive. Bryan hasn’t fought since winning the interim WBA heavyweight title on August 11, 2018. He beat BJ Flores by a 4th round knockout, and he’s been inactive ever since.
The WBA needs to come up with time limits for their champions and interim champions in how often they can go between title defenses. It’s frankly pathetic for a champion to sit on a world title like a mother hen for three years without defending it.
If Charr beats Bryan, it wouldn’t be surprising if he starts calling out Anthony Joshua, who holds the WBA Super World title.