Don King announced today that he intends to stage Trevor Bryan’s WBA “world” heavyweight title defense against Daniel Dubois, which he won the rights to via purse bid last month, on June 11th. The press release does not name a location or broadcast partner, but does claim that the card will feature “six championship bouts to continue to promote peace and freedom for the people of Ukraine.”
Notice that I didn’t use “set” or “official” in the headline. If this fight goes through, King is on the hook for over $3,000,000; the last time he submitted such a huge bid, he sabotaged Bryan’s (22-0, 15 KO) opponent’s ability to acquire a visa, allowing him to swap in the hapless and much less pricey Jonathan Guidry.
It’ll admittedly be much trickier to screw over Dubois (17-1, 16 KO), who has quite a bit more capital and promotional muscle behind him than Mahmoud Charr. King has already claimed that he’ll fight to get Bryan a greater share of the purse than the 55% stipulated by WBA guidelines, and that feels like a potential springboard for him to torpedo the fight. The WBA’s been willing to let him pull fast ones on Bryan’s foes so far, so we’ll see how this plays out. Odds are it won’t be in the ring.
