Greg Cohen Promotions won the purse bid to stage the WBA Middleweight title bout between champion Ryota Murata and Rob Brant, according to Dan Rafael of espn.com.
Cohen, who promotes Brant, was the only promoter to show up at the purse bid, which took place at the WBA offices in Panama City, Panama, and he won with an offer of $202,114 — $200,000 was the minimum bid allowed. He cited Oct. 27 as the fight date with locations potentially being New York, Atlantic City, New Jersey or Minneapolis (Brant’s home turf).
Murata won’t participate in the bout, as co-promoters Top Rank and Teiken Boxing declined to bid. They were upset that the WBA granted Brant a 50-50 split of the winning purse bid, which is a highly unusual cut for a challenger. Typically, the split would be 70-30 in favor of the titleholder.
With Murata not going through with the fight against Brant, he likely will either vacate the second-tier 160-pound title — Gennady Golovkin holds the main WBA belt — or be stripped.
Either way, Murata will fight on Oct. 20 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas and headline a Top Rank on ESPN+ card, Top Rank vice president Carl Moretti told ESPN.
“We elected not to bid on the fight, and neither did Teiken, so Greg Cohen was the only bidder on the fight, but Murata will be fighting Oct. 20. That’s all I can tell you,” Moretti said.
“The 50-50 was agreed to by all parties, and nobody objected at the time,” Cohen told ESPN from Panama City. “I can only control my actions. We’ve been part of this process [since] early 2017. Everybody was aware of the terms. The 50 percent has been out there. We went forward, we won the bid. It’s unfortunate if they don’t want to do the fight, but Rob Brant will be fighting for the WBA title in his next fight. We’d like it to be against Murata, but if it’s not against Murata, it will be against the next-highest-rated available contender.”
