Dmitry Bivol and Canelo Alvarez secured hefty paydays for their Saturday night boxing bout.
Canelo Alvarez is estimated to have made $53 million for his championship bout with Dmitry Bivol tonight. His opponent is likely to earn a career-high pay of roughly $5 million – $2 million was guaranteed prior to the event.
This was Alvarez’ first loss since 2013.
Bivol’s previous highest purse was $500,000 versus Craig Richards and $500,000 versus Umar Salamov. Heading into tonight Bivol faced scrutiny due to his nationality.
But he actually faces the biggest challenge when it comes to actually cashing in his purse thanks to his ethnicity.
Russian sanctions will make it very hard for Bivol to get paid for the boxing bout. Bivol was born in Kyrgyzstan – like UFC’s Valentina Shecvhenko – but is actually Russian. Despite training out of Calivornia, Bivol can’t quite get to his purse.
“It hasn’t arrived yet,” he told the Tass agency in Russia.
Prior to the boxing bout, WBC sanctioned Russian boxers – they’re not able to carry the national flag or sing the national anthem.
This is somewhat similar to how UFC is approaching Russian invasion of Ukraine with one big nuance. Thanks to the tricky political situation UFC issued a national flag ban and none of the athletes are permitted to walk out with flags.
“I think it’s very difficult,” said Bivol, before adding that the fee for the fight hadn’t yet arrived.
“We will still think about how to do it. We didn’t think ahead because the situation is changing rapidly.”
Bivol sicced his manager Vadim Kornilov on the task of securing the purse.
It could be worse – Wladimir Kltischko actually lobbied Bivol not be allowed to box Alvarez.
Klitschko, who retired in 2016, told BBC Radio: “[Bivol should] absolutely not [be facing Canelo].Every sanction, and it’s nothing against the personality or athletes, it’s about the politics of Russia. Every Russian representative in this case needs to be sanctioned, because this way we show to Russia that the world is against this senseless war and that there’s no good in this war.“