Skip to content
Home » Don King going to court as heavyweight bid ‘doesn’t pass the smell test’

Don King going to court as heavyweight bid ‘doesn’t pass the smell test’

  • by
  • 3 min read

Legendary promoter Don King is yet to get fully on board with a heavyweight title fight between Trevor Bryan and Daniel Dubois.

This outcome stems from a WBA purse bid won earlier this month against UK promoter Frank Warren.

King won the rights to stage the mandatory bout with a bid of $3,116,001.00. Warren only came up with $2,503,000.00 through Queensberry Promotions.

Aiming to stage Bryan vs. Dubois on June 18th, King immediately stated venues for the clash as London, England, South Florida, and New York in the United States.

But upon learning of the purse split on the day of the Zoom bids, King handed in a protest to the World Boxing Association.

The WBA stipulated that Bryan, as the champion, would get 55 percent of the three million bucks. Dubois, as the former interim ruler, would get 45 percent.

That wasn’t going to fly with King, though. He explained why in a recent confirmation that legal action would be his next move.

DON KING

“We don’t have a date because we protested the fight from the very beginning,” King told FightHype.com. “Something is going on that doesn’t quite meet the eye.

“When I had the interim champion, which was Trevor Bryan, we were going to fight Manuel [Mahmoud] Charr. We had the interim champion because we had beaten BJ Flores, and we appealed to the WBA for a 55/45 purse split.

“They categorically said we got to go by the rules. They gave me the ruling of 72/25 [split]. But what they did to me [this time with Bryan vs. Dubois] is give me a 55/45 because somebody asked for it.

“Then one day, they sent me a letter that says, ‘FrMarch 33rd, you got 180 days to do the fight, and you got sixty days for the negotiations.

“The next day, I get another saying the purse bid March 14rch. I was like, ‘which one is it going to be?’

“We protested that because something in the rules changed overnight when nobody really had the opportunity to negotiate.”

Trevor Bryan Daniel Dubois Heavyweight
Don King / Frank Warren

HEAVYWEIGHT FIGHT

Asked if he expects the heavyweight title fight to take place this summer, King responded: “We’ve got a fight, but they have to come up with that [75/25 split]. I can’t be no 45/55 because we’ve got the champion.

“When we had the interim champion, the rules said the champion gets 75, and the challenge gets 25. All of a sudden, the champion gets 55, and the challenger gets 45, so we’re going to court on that.

“They’ll say that ‘Don King is not playing the game,’ but this doesn’t pass the smell test,” concluded the Hall of Famer.

Big question marks now loom over whether Bryan vs. Dubois will take place this summer as planned.

WBN Editor Phil has over ten years of boxing news experience. Follow WBN on Twitter @WorldBoxingNews.