In the early morning of March 9, Beijing time, Chinese heavyweight boxer and WBO transitional world boxing champion Zhang Zhilei will start his second gold belt defense match in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, against former WBO heavyweight champion Parker. Since this is Zhang Zhilei's most crucial battle before challenging the winner of Fury vs Usyk, it has attracted the attention of a large number of Chinese netizens.
As the countdown to the game begins, in addition to the heated discussion of the victory and defeat, people are also discussing one thing, that is, the topic of Zhang Zhilei's appearance fee for this game. According to a friend in the author's circle, Zhang Zhilei's guaranteed appearance fee for this game is 800,000 US dollars, far from the 6 million US dollars that some self-leaders say. Although the $800,000 ** was much lower than people expected, which also surprised the insider, it was actually reasonable.
Looking back on Zhang Zhilei's career, he broke into the American professional boxing scene in 2014 until he competed with Helgovic for the IBF legal challenger in 2022, his appearance fee has not been high, so Zhang Zhilei has had a very hard time in the United States in the past few years, on the one hand, he has to maintain training expenses, on the other hand, he has to save money, and the appearance fee he earns needs to be spent carefully.
According to foreign media reports, Zhang Zhilei's appearance fee has only improved in the last three games, and his appearance fee for the contest with Hrgovic is $260,000, although he lost that game, he won the recognition of the industry, and then won the favor of Joyce.
In April 2023, Zhang Zhilei's appearance fee for the first match with Joyce was $350,000, and the appearance fee for Zhang Zhilei's second game against Joyce in September last year was $600,000. This time when I came to Saudi Arabia to compete, although the organizer is a local tyrant, the organizer has a mature operation team, and will not provide the boxer with a remuneration that is significantly higher than the market price because of his wealth, and it is already very good to be able to provide a chance to compete. The author also published an analysis some time ago, and at that time the author pointed out that the appearance fee of Zhang Zhilei and Parker was about one million US dollars, so the 800,000 US dollars guaranteed remuneration disclosed by the industry this time is very realistic and is a reliable data.
Of course, many domestic netizens will feel that the price of 800,000 is too little, and they think that Zhang Zhilei's current status should have received millions of dollars in appearance fees. In fact, this just reflects the barren soil of domestic boxing, and the perception of boxing is too superficial. The author needs to point out here that Zhang Zhilei's current "Transitional World Boxing Title" is actually just a critical state between the legal challenger and the official world boxing champion, strictly speaking, Zhang Zhilei is not a real world boxing champion, because he still has the official WBO boxing champion Usyk above, Zhang Zhilei now holds the "transitional belt" can only be regarded as a symbol of status higher than the legal challenger, so he is already good with an appearance fee of 800,000 US dollars, You must know that Mr. Arum, the greatest boxing promoter of all time, has revealed that the appearance fee of former WBC Transitional Heavyweight World Champion White is only $200,000-300,000.
Of course, Zhang Zhilei still has a chance to earn millions of dollars in appearance fees in the future, that is, if he survives until the day he challenges the winner of Fury vs Usyk, his appearance fee will definitely reach several million dollars, and if he can kill the winner of Usyk vs Fusyk, his worth will come to the level of tens of millions of dollars. But that's all for later, Zhang Zhilei must beat Parker before he can look forward to the future. As for whether Zhang Zhilei can cross the hurdle of Parker, let's wait and see on March 9.
**10,000 Fans Incentive Plan