Veteran boxing reporter Dan Rafael reported Wednesday that Haney’s side has completed its portion of the agreement. The WBO purse bid is still scheduled for Thursday because Top Rank and Davis have yet to bridge the financial gap.
WBO Championship Committee chairman Gustavo Olivieri confirmed the bidding will begin July 30 at 11:00 a.m. AST from the organization’s headquarters in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The minimum bid is $200,000. Haney, as champion, is entitled to 75 percent of the winning bid, while Davis will receive 25 percent.
The bigger question is whether Davis is pricing himself out of the fight. Rafael’s report identifies the remaining obstacle as the gap between Top Rank’s offer and Davis’ asking price, but the WBO purse split magnifies the financial challenge if Davis is seeking substantially more than $3 million.
A $3 million payday for Davis requires a $12 million winning bid, leaving $9 million for Haney. Raising Davis’s share to $4 million pushes the total bid to $16 million, with Haney receiving $12 million. A $5 million demand would require a $20 million bid, allocating $15 million to Haney and $5 million to Davis.
Those figures explain why the negotiations remain unresolved. Every additional $1 million Davis seeks increases the total winning bid by $4 million because he receives only 25 percent of the purse. As Thursday’s bidding approaches, the central question is no longer whether Haney wants the fight. It is whether Davis’ asking price leaves any promoter willing to pay what it takes to make the bout happen.
