“He was offered more money to fight Sergey than he was to fight Bivol, but it was not as much as he thought he should get. So I guess he felt that this was the better course. He clearly is very confident he’s gonna win the fight [against Bivol], so if he wins it, it was a great decision. I respect his decision and his management’s decision.”
Duva confirmed that Barrera was offered between $300,000 and $400,000 to challenge Kovalev on March 3.
“Their feeling is that this is a very winnable fight for [Barrera],” Duva said, “and that they would be in a stronger position to bargain when the time came to make a unification fight with Sergey, rather than a voluntary [title defense]. In a unification fight, I’m not in as strong a position to ask for things like options. This is the decision they made. We’ll see how it turns out. In the meantime, we’ve got a very interesting fight between him and Bivol. A very competitive fight, a very interesting fight, certainly on paper.”