Hall of Famer promoter Don King laid out a massive fee for a heavyweight fight that seemed to fail on an astronomical level.
Looking at the crowd for Daniel Dubois vs. Trevor Bryan, there couldn’t have been more than a thousand people at the arena in Miami.
King won the purse bid to stage a WBA ‘regular’ heavyweight title bout between the pair. Bryan, the champion, had beaten absolutely nobody.
Dubois vs Bryan
Back in March, the WBA said: “Don King Productions won the bidding for the World Boxing Association (WBA) World Heavyweight Championship bout between American Trevor Bryan and British Daniel Dubois.
“The team representing Bryan, with Don King himself present at the Purse Bid, won the rights to promote the bout with a bid of three million one hundred and sixteen thousand and one dollars (US$3,116,001.00).
“The next bid came from Queensberry Promotions. QP offered an amount of two million five hundred and three thousand dollars (US$2,503,000.00).”
Amazingly, the event went ahead with King relying on Pay Per View sales to get his money back. Judging by what took place, he’d have a tough job getting anywhere near the $3m he laid out.
Bryan was quickly found to be out of his depth. That’s despite Dubois being no world-beater himself.
Hurt early, Bryan got taken out in the fourth as Dubois claimed a place in the queue to face the winner of Oleksandr Usyk vs. Anthony Joshua II.
DON KING REACTION
Reaction to Don King’s showpiece was swift and brutal.
“This was the crowd right before the main event for the Don King event in Miami. Dubois deserves better than this,” said MMA reporter Ariel Helwani.
A fan added: “The only thing down will be Don King tomorrow when he realizes he’s paid 2.5 million dollars for a fight that didnt fill up a 500-seat community center.”
Dubois takes the meaningless belt. However, King takes the biggest loss – by the looks of it.
The views expressed in this article are the opinions of Phil Jay.
WBN Editor Phil has over ten years of boxing news experience. Follow WBN on Twitter @WorldBoxingNews.
