Bob Arum, who promotes WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, has accused Dillian Whyte of demanding more money to promote the bout with Fury.
Recently, Fury’s co-promoter, Frank Warren, dropped a record bid of $41 million to secure the promotional rights to the fight with Whyte.
As both sides entered that WBC purse bid, there was an 80-20 split in favour of Fury. Even at 20%, Whyte is going to receive by far the biggest payday of his entire career.
However, Arum indicates that Whyte – who remains unusually quiet since the WBC’s purse bid – is requesting more money to promote the event.
“Whyte is trying to get more money. He’s trying to hold us up. One thing when you win a purse bid, it says that the fighters will help in ways to promote.
Well, that’s sort of ambiguous. And most fighters, because they’re professional they will promote,” Arum told the Queensberry Promotions YouTube channel.
“Now he’s saying, ‘I want extra money to promote because you’re stuck paying me what the purse bids said which is $7.3 million and I want some more money from you to go out there and promote”.
“And our position is, well we’re not going to give it to you. Now, if the fight does enormously well, yeah we’ll give you a taste at the backend where everybody’s made money. But we’re not going to be put in a position where you’re threatening us, to not participate in the promotion.
“Because again, there’s always tomorrow and even if Whyte loses the fight, which he figures to do, by participating in the promotion he builds his image and his career. And secondly and even more important, Whyte needs the exposure from this big fight and his threat is, that he’s not going to avail himself to that exposure.”
Whyte has until February 21 to sign the bout agreement. Fury has already signed on for the fight.
The fight comes up on April 23 at the famous Wembley Stadium.