By Barry Holbrook: Frank Warren’s Queensbury Promotions won Thursday’s purse bid for the Demetrius Andrade vs. Zach Parker fight, outbidding Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing/DAZN.
The Andrade-Parker fight is expected to take place on May 21st in the UK, giving the unbeaten Parker (22-0, 16 KOs) the advantage in fighting in front of his boxing fans.
For Warren’s Queensbury Promotions, this is the second consecutive time they’ve outbid Hearn for an important fight. Warren recently came out with the winning bid to stage the Tyson Fury vs. Dillian Whyte fight on April 23rd.
That one had to have been a dagger in the heart for Hearn to lose out, as that would have been a massive fight for him to place on DAZN to bring in subscribers in the UK.
Matchroom/DAZN are likely saving their money for the enormous two-fight contract that they’ll be giving superstar Canelo Alvarez to fight Dmitry Bivol in May and Gennadiy Golovkin in September.
We’re probably talking about close to $90 million that Canelo will be getting for that 2-fight deal with Hearn. With that kind of expenditure, it’s not surprising that Hearn has come up short in his last two purse bids.
Warren’s winning bid: $1,834,050 beat out Hearn’s bid $1,750,000. The split will be 65/35 in Andrade’s favor, bringing him a nice payday of $1,192,132.
For his part, the unbeaten #1 WBO Parker will be getting $641,918. Andrade, a former two-division world champion, has the experience over Parker.
On paper, this fight is a mismatch, but you never know. The 27-year-old Parker is a natural super middleweight, younger than the 33-year-old Andrade, hits harder, and will be fighting in front of his fans.
Another bid won! 🙌
🥊 Roll on #ParkerAndrade! 🇬🇧🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/9jt9ybBX2r
— Frank Warren (@frankwarren_tv) February 24, 2022
This fight is about Andrade and Parker trying to put themselves in a position to challenge WBO super middleweight champion, Canelo Alvarez.
Unfortunately, the Andrade-Parker winner won’t be guaranteed a title shot against the superstar Canelo, considering their fight isn’t a title eliminator. It’s just for the WBO interim 168-lb title.
There’s an excellent chance that Canelo will vacate the WBO title at some point, meaning that the winner of the Andrade vs. Parker fight will be elevated to full championship status when that happens.
Canelo has made it abundantly clear with his comments that he has no intention of ever fighting the slick southpaw Andrade, and that’s why it’s likely we’ll see him jettison his WBO 168-lb title rather than defend it against the American.
Parker has big-time power, as we saw recently with his destruction of Marcus Morrison and Sherzod Husanov.
Morrison is the same fighter that Chris Eubank Jr. had problems with in the early rounds of their fight last May. He was forced to go the full 10 round distance to defeat Morrison in that fight.
In contrast, Parker obliterated Morrison, stopping him in four rounds last November.
Andrade will have to be careful that he doesn’t let Parker get his shots off because he’s a much bigger puncher than Liam Williams, who Demetrius struggled with in the later rounds last April.
