Anthony Joshua and Andy Ruiz Jr will see their bank balances swell after their rematch this weekend.
The heavyweights will rake in millions – but Joshua will earn almost six times as much as the champion.
Joshua will earn the biggest pay cheque in British boxing history – £46million – with Ruiz Jr earning around £7.5m.
The Brit’s purse is more than double the £20m Ricky Hatton earned for fighting Floyd Mayweather in 2007.
Win or lose, Joshua will take his career earnings over the £100m mark.
His huge pay day is in part thanks to Saudi Arabia paying a staggering £33m to host the fight after making an 11th-hour bid to snatch the rematch from Cardiff.
The fight will also cost fans in the UK £24.95 after Sky Sports hiked the price of the pay-per-view.
(Image: Action Images via Reuters)
But the promotion in has been criticised in light of the Kingdom’s human rights violations, including the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul in October 2018.
In an interview with the BBC, Joshua said that as a heavyweight contender it was his duty to expand the sport into new markets, just as the likes of Muhammad Ali and George Foreman had done before.
The famous ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ in Kinshasa in 1974 was staged in a stadium containing torture cells, and in which opponents of the ruling Mobutu regime had been routinely lined up and shot.
Joshua said: “I just came here for the boxing opportunity. I feel like taking boxing global is what a world champion or challenger should be doing. You fight around the world.
“I try and bring positivity and light where ever I go. I just feel I’ve got a fight to focus on – for the future maybe I can bear a different kind of flag, but at the minute it’s the world championship flag I’m trying to bear.”
(Image: Action Images via Reuters)
In a statement earlier this week, Amnesty international called on Joshua to educate himself about the issues in the Kingdom, which executed 149 people last year – many of them publicly – ranking third behind only China and Iran.
Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn also launched an impassioned defence of the move, suggesting it would have been a dereliction of his duty to overlook the enormous sums of money being offered to his fighter.
Hearn went on to claim Saudi Arabia, which has also recently hosted fights involving Britons Amir Khan, Callum Smith and George Groves, would become a regular venue for big fights in light of its unbeatable financial muscle.
“My only focus is on the boxing,” added Joshua.
“It’s just me coming from Watford and being told I’m fighting in Saudi Arabia. It’s like, ‘all right, let’s rock and roll’. We looked at different venues, but this was the one.”
