A partial list of salaries for Saturday’s Andre Ward (31-0, 15 KOs) vs. Sergey Kovalev (30-1-1,26 KOs) rematch has been revealed. Ward is getting a $6.5 million purse, up from the $5 million from his first fight. As for Kovalev, he’s fighting for free. Actually not really, but his purse has been written down as $0, as opposed to the $2 million (plus PPV points) when they first met.
BoxingScene reports that his contract “is expected to state that Kovalev will make 75 percent of his side’s overall take from the event, not a specific figure.” In other words, he’ll be earning his money off of the pay-per-view revenue as well as ticket sales. This isn’t entirely uncommon for a boxer to have his final take tied primarily to a percentage of the PPV and/or gate revenue. As recently as 2015, Canelo Alvarez’s win over James Kirkland came saw him earn at least $3.5 million off of event revenue, although that card was not an HBO PPV, but a stadium show in Texas.
Now with all of this said, a rematch as compelling as this one has been terribly promoted by Jay-Z’s Roc Nation Sports, which promotes Ward. They have been nothing short of disastrous with their venture into boxing, particularly the incredible overspend on Miguel Cotto that ultimately led to Cotto failing to even complete his three-fight contract. For a fight that only did 160,000 buys and a $3.3 million gate, it’s distinctly possible that numbers are down on both sides for the rematch, and that’s not good financial news for Kovalev.
According to Kovalev’s manager Egis Klimas, Sergey believes that Ward “intentionally has done less to promote the event because he dislikes Kovalev and knows he can affect his bottom line.”
“The first fight, [Kovalev] did so much [to promote it],” said Egis Klimas, Kovalev’s manager. “He flew the country back and forth. On this, he doesn’t feel like Ward is doing enough to promote. Ward has a sugar daddy who pays him $7 million for this fight. OK? Sergey is earning every single penny. He is promoting this fight as much as he can. Every single penny comes from the fans – from the ticket sales, from the pay-per-view, Sergey is earning. Nobody’s giving it to him.”
In the back-and-forth blame game, Roc Nations Sports’ Michael Yormark pinned the blame on the Russian, who left in the middle of Thursday’s press conference. Whatever the case, there’s no more time to left to promote the fight, and Ward and Kovalev will lock horns again tomorrow night. At stake are Ward’s WBC, WBA, and IBF light heavyweight titles, which he won from Kovalev by unanimous decision back in November.
Courtesy of ESPN’s Dan Rafael, here are the salaries for two of the three HBO PPV undercard bouts.
WBA Super Bantamweight (122 lbs) Title, 12 rounds
Guillermo Rigondeaux (Champion, 17-0, 11 KOs): $120,000
Moises Flores (Challenger, 25-0-1, 17 KOs): $25,000
Middleweights (160 lbs, 10 rounds)
Luis Enrique Arias (17-0, 8 KOs): $25,000
Arif Magomedov (18-1, 11 KOs): $25,000
Bloody Elbow will have live coverage of Andre Ward vs. Sergey Kovalev 2 on Saturday, June 17th at 9 PM ET/6 PM PT. The main event is expected to happen at around 11-11:30 PM ET.