Promoter Yvon Michel officially won the purse bid to stage the Adonis Stevenson – Oleksandr Gvozdyk light heavyweight title bout, according to Dan Rafael of espn.com.
Michel told ESPN on Thursday that Bob Yalen, the WBC supervisor of the purse bid, called him and Arum to confirm that Michel had done nothing wrong related to the purse bid, and to confirm that his bid would stand as the winner.
“[Yalen] did add the WBC will tighten up its rules regarding a bid,” Michel said. “Top Rank reiterated their commitment to give us a close collaboration in every aspect of the organization of the fight.
“We lobbied for that result because I think that was the only fair thing,” Arum said. “Carl believed Yvon was taken by surprise by the other bid and Yvon outbid us, so he’s entitled to do the fight.
“My view of the ruling is, I support it completely and I advocated for it. But I would like the WBC to tighten up the rules to the extent that they exact a punishment from somebody like Haymon or Brown who did what they did — to put a bid in and then immediately withdraw it. I realize you can’t make the penalty retroactive but certainly going forward they can do something to prevent this from happening.”
“I told Yvon that we would be as cooperative and supportive to him as we could,” Arum said. “I told Yvon that if he had any problem with Showtime (which puts on Haymon’s major fights) buying the fight that I would arrange for ESPN to buy the fight.”