Frank Warren Wins Fury-Whyte Purse Bid With Massive Offer

We knew the chance to promote a potential Tyson Fury return to the UK and defense of his WBC Heavyweight belt would come at a hefty price tag and on Friday we found out just how big it was.

Frank Warren and Queensberry Promotions won the World Boxing Council blind purse bid for Fury’s mandatory defense against England’s Dillan Whyte upcoming with a whopping 41 million dollar price tag.

The WBC made the announcement midday Friday that Warren, who has promoted Fury his entire career and now co-promotes him along with Bob Arum of Top Rank Boxing in the U.S., had secured the bout for later this year by almost 10 million dollars more than any other bidder.

This is the coin flipped to determine the opening of the bids
$32,222,222 by @MatchroomBoxing
$41,025,000 by
Queensberry Promotions
This is the biggest purse bid in the history of boxing
Congratulations #FuryWhyte @WBCBoxing Heavyweight championship@Tyson_Fury @DillianWhyte pic.twitter.com/Blz4IUDKlH

— Mauricio Sulaiman (@wbcmoro) January 28, 2022

The purse bid win by Queensberry is a blow financially and to the ego of Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing, which bid $32 million to try to secure the bout. Hearn has been positioning a potential number one contender title fight with Whyte for over a year.

Now, it appears obvious that Warren will stage the fight at an outdoor venue like famed Wembley Stadium that can seat in excess of 85,000 for boxing or some other massive facility to help recoup a lot of the guaranteed money that he’s laid out.

The WBC continues to maintain that the purse split will be 80% / 20% Which means Fury stands to make over $30 guaranteed. Still, that will be the highest paid a Whyte career as he is set to make somewhere around $8 or $9 million guaranteed. Whyte is suing the WBC on a couple of fronts, including the purse bid split, which he believes should be at least 40% for him.

Meanwhile, as we have written all week, there had been buzz about Unified Heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua taking “step aside money” in the neighborhood of $20 million U.S. dollars to allow Fury to fight current Unified champ, unbeaten Oleskandrr Usyk of Ukraine.

However, Joshua did not act quickly enough or balked at the offer and the deal fell apart, leaving the WBC purse bid to Friday.

Fury was last in the ring in October when he beat former champion Deontay Wilder decisively for the second straight time. This time by 11th round TKO stoppage. He’s also the former Undisputed Heavyweight titleholder after having defeated at Wladimir Klitschko by decision in 2015. He later very famously disappeared from the boxing landscape for over two years and vacated all of his titles.

Whyte, who previously lost to Anthony Joshua himself in 2015 by KO was last in the ring in March of 2021. That’s when he avenged a KO loss to Russian Alexander Povetkin by beating Povetkin in just two rounds in their rematch.

It is believed that Fury and Wilder could be ready to fight as soon as April, but we will wait to see on the timeline that Queensbury has. ESPN’s Mike Coppinger floated the date of April 23rd with a venue to be determined,

Sources: The target date for Tyson Fury-Dillian Whyte is April 23, though it could land on another date in April. Several U.K., venues being considered. Will be an ESPN PPV in the U.S. and BT Sport PPV in U.K.

— Mike Coppinger (@MikeCoppinger) January 28, 2022

And, we wait to see how it relates to the potential rematch date for Joshua to fight Usyk, who beat him by decision in September?

They could be fighting in the April/May range, as well.