By Jeff Aronow: A site fee of $150 million from Saudi Arabia is being proposed for the heavyweight unification fight in July between Anthony Joshua vs. Tyson Fury.
According to ESPN, WBC champ Fury (30-0-1, 21 KOs) will receive $75 million, and IBF/WBA/WBO champion Joshua (24-1, 22 KOs) will get $75M as well.
Both fighters will bring in several million extras for expenses for the undercard. Mark Kriegel of ESPN is the source for the $150 million site figure.
These numbers still need to be verified by Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn, who might have something different to say about the $150M number being bandied about by ESPN.
These numbers are obviously well below the $100 million that Joshua and Fury were said to be making for the fight. So it’s unclear if their pay will be bumped up to $100 million or not.
If not, will they both be on board with the money, or will one of them hold out for it to be increased to the previously discussed $100M figure?
The $150 million for the Joshua vs. Fury fight is considerably higher than the $60 million of AJ’s second clash against Andy Ruiz Jr in December 2019.
That makes sense, though, as there’s a lot more worldwide interest in a fight between Joshua and Fury than there was for the AJ-Ruiz rematch.
Many people are boiling over with anger at the Joshua-Fury fight going abroad to Saudi Arabia rather than staying at home to fight in front of their loyal boxing fans in the UK.
Fans are still waiting for an official announcement of the fight, along with the final site fees. Until then, you can expect to see different sites coming up with wild numbers in playing a guessing game for what the final site fee totals will be.
You can argue that the $150 million numbers could be conservative compared to the rumors of a site feel well over $200 million.
The Joshua vs. Fury fight’s proposed date is July 24th in Saudi Arabia, as long as the two fighters agree to the deal. Eddie Hearn expects to make an announcement soon on the date and site deal.
All four heavyweight titles will be at stake for the Joshua vs. Fury fight on the night.
Unfortunately, the winner of the fight won’t hold onto the four belts for long, as they’re expected to begin vacating almost immediately due to the different mandatory requirements.
The first belt that is likely to be vacated is the WBO strap, which will likely fall into the hands of mandatory Oleksandr Usyk.