It’s already quite rare for a less prominent and prestigious company to win a bid for organizing a world title fight. But for it to happen twice in the same day is truly shocking, yet that’s exactly what happened yesterday to Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing and Bob Arum’s Top Rank.
The first to be outbid was British promoter Hearn. Matchroom offered just over 1.5 million dollars to secure the rights to organize the welterweight world title fight between their client Jaron Ennis and IBF mandatory challenger Karen Chukhadzhian, but P2M-Box Promotion, representing the Ukrainian fighter, won the bid with an offer of 2 million dollars.
The situation involving Top Rank was even more ironic. The powerful organization led by Bob Arum was outbid by just one thousand dollars and had to relinquish the right to organize the IBF and WBO middleweight world title fight between Kazakh champion Zhanibek Alimkhanuly and challenger Andrei Mikhailovich. Top Rank offered 350,000 dollars, not enough to beat Limit Boxing’s 351,000 dollar bid. Alimkhanuly reacted with apparent shock to the news, posting a telling tweet on X:
What these two fights have in common is the skepticism from fans and insiders about whether they will be interesting and competitive, which might explain why the two renowned promoters didn’t go all out in the bidding process. Karen Chukhadzhian was already soundly defeated on points by Jaron Ennis, losing every round, and it’s unclear how he could overturn the result in the rematch. Meanwhile, Australian Andrei Mikhailovich is unbeaten, but the quality of his opponents to date leaves much to be desired, and very few believe he has a chance against the formidable Alimkhanuly.
We will now see whether Ennis and Alimkhanuly accept the challenge of fighting in an event organized by their opponents’ promoters or if they choose to vacate their titles and pursue different paths, perhaps moving up in weight.