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Sergey Kovalev withdraws from purse bid for Adonis Stevenson bout
The road to a big fight is always difficult, filled with potholes and land mines that often make a seemingly simple deal mind-bogglingly complex.
On Tuesday, the likelihood of a light heavyweight title unification bout between IBF-WBA-WBO champion Sergey Kovalev and WBC champion Adonis Stevenson became far less when Main Events CEO Kathy Duva said she had decided against participating in a WBC-mandated purse bid scheduled for Friday in Mexico City.
The WBC ordered the bout for the fourth quarter of this year, after Kovalev satisfies his IBF mandatory defense with Nadjib Mohammedi in the summer. That came after Duva lobbied the organization at the WBC convention in Las Vegas in December to make Kovalev its mandatory challenger with a 50-50 purse split.
The WBC did that, but ordered the purse bid for April 17.
Part of the reason for Duva's decision to pull Kovalev from the process is Kovalev's exclusive contract with HBO, which forbids him from appearing on another network. If another promoter won the purse bid, it would then have the power to choose a television partner and that promoter could opt to put the fight on either Showtime or on a Premier Boxing Champions-affiliated network such as ABC, CBS, NBC or ESPN.
Also, Duva said it would create financial difficulty to make a purse bid down for a fight in the fourth quarter with so many unknowns. She pointed to the fluctuations of the Canadian and Russian dollars as one example.
In her letter to Sulamain, she wrote:
First of all, we are still finalizing arrangements for the IBF mandatory fight with Mohammedi, which will take place this summer. It would be entirely incongruous to hold a purse bid for the subsequent Stevenson bout prior to finalizing the Mohammedi bout.
Second of all, the early bid that has been proposed would necessarily violate the WBC rules and cause financial hardship.
Rule 2.21 states that championship contracts are due for presentment within seven (7) days of a purse bid. It also states that the date and location must be specified within fifteen (15) days of a purse bid. It is quite difficult to specify a date for the Stevenson bout months before the Mohammedi bout takes place. Typically, purse bids are built upon offers from television networks and sites. As television networks generally focus upon one bout at a time, and as so many worldwide networks are focused primarily on the upcoming mega-fight between Pacquiao and Mayweather right now, a Kovalev/Stevenson bout is not yet on their radar.
Similarly, sites want certainty, as well. Kovalev and Stevenson are both scheduled to fight other opponents this summer. As we all know, this is boxing and anything can happen. Fighters could be injured or even lose a match. When an arena locks in a date, it locks out others who may wish to contract for the arena on that same date. The same holds for major television networks. Thus the reluctance of arenas and networks in this regard is understandable.
Duva said it is her understanding that Stevenson would be agreeable to fighting on HBO. However, his promoter, Yvon Michel of GYM, said that would only be in the event that Main Events made the best offer and won the purse bid.
But Michael said if his group or some other promoter won the bid and opted to put the fight on a different network, he would want to do that in order to maximize revenue.
He said he was confident he could draw 20,000 to a potential Stevenson-Kovalev fight in Quebec City that could do a live paid gate well in excess of $5 million Canadian.
"She doesn't have a market to compete with that and she knows it," Michel told Yahoo Sports. However, Michel said he urged Duva to participate in the purse bid process.
WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman was unhappy when he learned of Duva's decision, and said he planend to send her a letter in response on Wednesday.
He told Yahoo Sports, "She is clearly saying by her words that the WBC is at fault. I clearly want to say that this is very disappointing. The WBC did something unprecedented, which is to make Kovalev, the champion of three other organizations, the mandatory challenger for the WBC champion, whoever it would be, Stevenson or anyone else, because he always wanted to be the WBC champion. This is a very unfortunate decision."
Duva said there are many practical business decisions why she made the choice to not participate.
"Unfortunately, since December, many things have changed," she said. "We have learned that there may be tentative plans for three other PPV events during the same quarter. In addition, the fact that lower-than-expected attendance and TV ratings for Adonis Stevenson’s last fight, coupled with Stevenson’s poor track record with PPV and closed circuit in Canada, have given us pause. Further, the WBC’s unexpected decision to call a purse bid in April for a fight that will not take place until the fourth quarter of 2015 would make an already speculative bid even more risky.
"The normal timeline for a purse bid bout is a maximum of 90 days. The current strength of the American dollar and fluctuating exchange rates in Russia and Canada make revenue predictions done six months in advance of this particular event even more speculative. Therefore, we cannot reliably project the anticipated revenue for a fight that would take place so far in the future. Taking into account Stevenson’s alarming decline in popularity, the highly speculative nature of the bid and the fact that both Sergey and Stevenson are scheduled to take other fights this summer, the risk of guaranteeing a PPV event in the fall is prohibitive. We simply cannot make an informed bid under these circumstances."
