Fury-White: Frank Warren wins bid with record $41 million

Frank Warren's Queensberry Promotions offered a bigger bid than Eddie Hearn's Matchroom Boxing and won the right to organize a mandatory defense of the WBC heavyweight title between its holder Tyson Fury and official contender Dillian Whyte.

Warren's winning bid, which was co-financed with Fury's other promoter, Bob Arum's Top Rank, was a record $41,025,000, almost $9 million more than Matchroom offered the two polar British heavyweights for this fight. Matchroom, which represents White, bid $32,222,222 in the virtual WBC auction.

Queensberry and Top Rank offered a huge amount of money to organize Fury-White, primarily because Arum and Warren did not want their most popular and valuable boxer to compete on platforms other than ESPN and BT Sport for even one fight. ESPN has an exclusive partnership with Top Rank, as does Warren with BT Sport in the UK and Ireland.

Matchroom works with the worldwide DAZN streaming service.

If the Fury-White fight takes place, it will be on pay-per-view in the US and UK. The fight is expected to take place in April in the UK.

Despite the fact that the total fee of Fury (31-0-1, 22 KOs) and White (28-2, 19 KOs) turned out to be a very impressive amount, thanks to the colossal winning bid of Queensberry and Top Rank, the fight will not take place if White does not agree to the fee section. Late last year, the WBC decided that the ratio should be 80-20 in favor of Fury, although the usual division, according to the rules of the Council, in the event of a meeting between the champion and the mandatory challenger is 70-30.

Two months ago at the annual WBC convention in Mexico City, Top Rank Bob Arum, Fury's co-promoter, demanded an 80-20 split. White, who has already sued the WBC for failing to secure his mandatory challenger status, has protested the 80-20 split because he is convinced he is worth significantly more than 20 percent.

Now, if White agrees to an 80-20 split, he is guaranteed $8,205,000 to fight Fury. His undefeated opponent will be guaranteed $32,820,000.

Throughout this week, representatives from Fury, White, Anthony Joshua and Oleksandr Usyk have been trying to come to an agreement that would allow Joshua to forfeit his immediate rematch with Usyk and resolve the Fury-Usyk fight for a full unification of the heavyweight titles. As part of this agreement, Joshua (24-2, 22 KOs) and White were to receive substantial release clauses, but the parties were unable to reach an agreement that would satisfy all involved.

Now that Queensberry and Top Rank have won the Fury-White bid, it looks like Joshua will have his rematch against Usyk (19-0, 13 KOs). The former undisputed heavyweight champion defeated Joshua by unanimous decision on September 25 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, and took away his IBF, WBA and WBO titles.

Joshua's contract included an immediate rematch clause, despite Usyk being the mandatory WBO challenger for one of his four titles. Rematch clauses are usually prohibited in championship fight contracts, which are mandatory defenses.