Bob Arum Says Oleksandr Usyk Wants 50-50 For Tyson Fury Fight, But If It’s At Wembley 50-50 Isn’t ‘Right’

Bob Arum is hopeful Tyson Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk happens in Saudi Arabia this summer.

Arum confirmed the news to Boxingscene.com, that if the offer from Saudi Arabia is not accepted, the backup plan is to host the fight at Wembley Stadium. However, if it happens in the UK, Arum says the 50-50 split that Usyk and Fury would get is no longer right as Fury would be the A-side in the UK.

“Everybody agreed that if [Saudi Arabia’s] offer comes through and it’s real, that’s how we’ll go,” Arum, whose company co-promotes Fury with Warren’s Queensberry Promotions. “If not, we’ll do the fight at Wembley… The fighters have agreed to fight. I spoke to Frank Warren. We’re giving them until [this] week to come with their offer, which I believe we’ll get. If we don’t, then we’re gonna do the fight at Wembley. And then we’d have to talk about the percentages because Usyk wants 50-50. That’s not right if the fight’s at Wembley because there will be 95,000 Brits at the fight and big Brit pay-per-view money, so Tyson deserves the lion’s share.

“But we don’t get to that point if the [investors in Saudi Arabia] come through, because the way they operate is they make deals with each of the fighters,” Arum added. “We’ve been led to believe that they’re going to come with a proposal [this] week. I’ll believe it when I see it, but it’s not like they haven’t come through in the past.”

As of right now, however, all signs do point to the Saudis putting together the best deal to host arguably the biggest fight to make in boxing in Tyson Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk.

Tyson Fury (33-0-1) is coming off a TKO win over Derek Chisora in December and before that, scored a TKO win over Dillian Whyte.

Oleksandr Usyk (20-0) has rattled off back-to-back wins over Anthony Joshua to become the new heavyweight champ and then defend his titles.

Do you think Tyson Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk happens in 2023?