This was a little unexpected. We knew that Hughie Fury was gonna be the first challenger for Joseph Parker’s WBO world title. We knew that they hadn’t been able to come to an agreement about the where and when so it was headed for a purse bid.

But from what everyone was saying it really sounded like they were all preparing for a trip to England for the scrap. Fury’s promoted Frank Warren was talking tough through the English media and Parker was reminding everyone that he does actually have experience fighting overseas, in Germany and America, and away from his comfort zones. That’s true as well and it seemed like with a belt draped over his shoulder that Parker and his team (emphasis on ‘his team’) were ready to accept the unfavourable conditions of the British Isles. Money talks, after all.

And then this happened:

Okay, backtrack a step. When two fighters are ordered to fight, as has been the case here with a mandatory defence of the belt due and Hughie Fury the highest ranked available dude, the parties get together and figure out how the money and the event is gonna work. If they can’t come to some kind of conclusion then it goes to a purse bid. A purse bid means that each promoter submits a number that’ll make up the purse (prize money) should they win it. Bids are blind so you can get pretty disparate ideas on what it’s all worth, the winner then gets control of the fight with the purse split between the fighters depending on how the sanctioning body has agreed. In this case it’s a 60-40 split, in Parker’s favour since he’s the champ.

The Parker-Fury fight had a US$1m minimum bid. Warren offered $2.80 million and Duco bid $3.01 million, they were the only bidders (other promoters are eligible to bid once it hits the purse but that was never likely here). That means that regardless of the outcome, Joe Parker’s in for a NZ $2.46 million payday. Not bad cash if you can get it, hey?

Which makes you wonder where the hell Duco found the funds. That’s a lot of money to place in the prize banks considering we haven’t even gotten to the hosting side of things. Expect the PPV price to rise again for this one, folks.

Of course, Duco aren’t the amateur solo battlers they once were anymore, at least not with regards to Smokin’ Joe Parker. After dealing with Bob Arum and Top Rank in the Andy Ruiz fight, they signed an agreement which means that Top Rank are now also co-promoters of Parker. Exactly how that partnership works isn’t 100% clear but Top Rank VP Carl Moretti was in attendance at the purse bid. Duco are pretty loose in how they work. Top Rank is as professional as they come. Handcuffing the pair together seems like a positive for all. In particular it means that Duco have to be taken seriously on the global scale and they now have the facilities to match their superstar ambition for Joe.

By the way, it ain’t only Joe either. Duco’s Jeff ‘The Hornet’ horn is fighting Manny Pacquiao in Queensland (probably) for the WBO World Welterweight title three weeks after the Parker-Fury bout. Horn whupped Ali Funeka on the undercard of Parker-Ruiz in December, pretty much a trial as it turned out for a fight with Pacquiao, Top Rank’s modern standard bearer.

Winning the purse bid was another power move from DucoPro. Just because they’re heading for primetime doesn’t mean they’re about to be pushed around (not with their mate Top Rank hanging around ready to beat up anyone who tries). But there’s a way more immediate reason for going all in on the purse and that’s the immeasurable boost of home advantage. Parker has fought overseas, that’s true, but his close decision wins over Takam and Ruiz were both in NZ… as have been 18 of his 22 pro fights in total.

If the fight were in Britain, it woulda been hard to tip a winner. In NZ, Parker is a favourite. All the words that the Fury’s had to say about dragging Parker out of his comfort zone can just as easily be seen as an admission that they don’t wanna travel themselves. Fair enough too, Fury is even younger than Parker (22 vs 25) and although he’s 20-0 with 10 KOs, this is also the first major fight of his career. Three of his first four fights were international but since then he’s fought almost exclusively in the UK or Ireland, the exception being a unanimous decision over Andriy Rudenko in Monaco back in February 2015 (on the undercard of a Gennady Golovkin defence). We know all about the life story of Hughie’s cousin Tyson, the traveller background and all that. Hughie is trained by his father and the whole camp is a tight family affair. Fighting as the main card amidst a crowd that’ll be out for his blood is not going to be easy at all.

Also, Hughie hasn’t been active since April 2016. His last fight was a dull technical decision over Fred Kassi which didn’t come close to displaying the huge potential that Hughie has as a heavyweight and since then he’s had to lie low with a rare skin condition. He’s good to go again now but there’ll be some rust and for an inexperienced fighter that’s not ideal.

The fight itself can be analysed deeper at a later date, we’ve still got eight weeks to go here folks. Suffice to say that neither of these dudes have the crushing power to end this and that both of them are skilled and durable enough that it’s hard to see a crucial mistake deciding things. At this early stage it looks like a decision fight, just like the Takam and Ruiz fights were, so having the crowd on your side, cheering every punch, dropping voracious hints to the judges, can only be a good thing for Parker’s chances.  

And the other thing is that British boxing is very firmly distracted by the small deal of Anthony Joshua vs Wladimir Klitschko on April 29, leaving this bout in the shadows. That’s a fight that Joseph Parker will almost certainly be in attendance for now that his own next move has a date set.

Hence we’ve gotta applaud Duco on a sporting level for going all in for their bloke and ensuring he’s got the best chance to get a result. Given the contrasting economics of boxing in Britain and in New Zealand, it’s a surprise that Frank Warren was outbid on this thing. He’s no sucker, he’s worked with plenty of the best British boxers of the last couple decades. But then Hughie Fury is mostly seen as The Cousin Of at this stage and Joseph Parker is a name known in the UK as a possible future challenger for Anthony Joshua and not much else. Neither of these lads are names anywhere else around the world. Strange as that sounds for a heavyweight title fight, that was also the case with Parker vs Ruiz. It seems that Warren might have misjudged how willing Duco were to seize control here… and that they’d have the money to do it.

Because that really is a lot of money to invest. Honestly, so much money, what the hell!? We’re already hearing the consequences of that with talk that the fight might not be held in Auckland, that there’s interest from Samoa and Singapore. Don’t fall for it, it’s gonna happen in Auckland and Duco are gonna squeeze blood from every stone they can find. Tacky sponsorships? Public funding? Dramas with ticket sales? All of the above, most likely.

But we should at least get a cracking fight at the end of it.