How much do boxers make?

The glamour of a big boxing event can provide a false image into a sport that often does not pay well

The flashing lights, dramatic ringwalks, Hollywood A-listers sat ringside, and all the glitz and glamour that comes with a huge boxing event can give an unreliable snapshot into a sport that’s not financially rewarding for most.

The disparity of pay in boxing is wider than any other sport. One boxer could walk away from a professional boxing fight with zero profit, whereas the sport’s biggest star could be pocketing up to £100million for one night.

Boxing is all about levels; it’s an analogy that gets used copiously, and for good reason. It relates to both the quality and quantities involved in the sport.

You could be boxing’s next biggest superstar, but you will have to start from the bottom rung of the ladder and work your way upwards to the big time. And that process will often mean you will be getting punched in the face without any real financial reward.

But boxing is all about the long game – you pay your dues, then your dues get paid.

The below examples of how boxers get paid contains approximate figures and some of the cases are generalised, as it’s not always an exact science.

So if you ever wanted to know how boxers get paid, read on to learn all about the varying levels of wages you can earn for putting your life on the line in the name of entertainment.

Ticket deals

An amateur boxer that didn’t have an outstanding career to capture the attention and subsequently a contract from a big promoter will likely start on a ticket deal with a small hall promoter.

This arrangement means that the fledgling pro must sell tickets to their fight, most being allocated a standard amount of 100 tickets to start with. These tickets will be a mix of standard and ringside.

If a boxer is able to sell their full allocation, then that could reach a value of in and around £5,000 in ticket sales, as a loose example. 

Of that money, the promoter will take £1,000 for ‘the house’, so that’s to cover their costs for promoting and organising the entire show, of which are there a lot of outgoings; then the opponent will need to be paid from that share too, who could earn anything from £1,000-£1,500; then the boxer has to pay their corner team 10%, which could be £250-£500, plus there’s usually an extra pair of hands that will get £50-£100 for their help in the corner or the dressing room on the night.

That leaves the boxer with around £1,800 for himself, which will typically be for a four or six round bout.

But what happens when you don’t sell that allocation? A boxer from Sittingbourne, Kent, once made his pro debut in London and was only able to sell just over half his tickets, which meant he was able to pay out everyone else but himself. After being left with nothing, the promoter was kind enough to offer to pay his travel costs and he went home with £75 in his pocket.

However, a boxer with a large fanbase that can sell over 200 tickets could be earning up to £10,000 in ticket sales, which is a far better payday. Boxers that can sell over 200 tickets to their fights are rare, however, because they are selling to family and friends and their local area, which is a limited demographic. Plus, a bigger promoter would soon take an interest in any boxers that are such big ticket-sellers, as they are worth their weight in gold.

So, there’s the potential to earn up to £5-6,000 for a four-round fight, but most boxers at this stage of their careers will realistically be taking home around £1,500-£1,800 in wages.

That may seem okay for just a four-round fight, one night’s work, only 12 minutes of boxing time, but when the training camp has taken eight weeks and there’s been equipment, kit, supplements, food, travel and other necessities to pay for, that amount in ticket sales could actually be averaging around £100 in weekly wages. 

This is why most boxers in the early stage will have a full-time job alongside their pro boxing career. Earning up to £2k for a four-round fight, which most prospects only manage to fight four times a year, is nowhere near enough to live on.

If there’s 100 fighters in a single division in the UK, it’s quite likely only the top 10 are full-time, and even then, not all of them will be. The current Commonwealth, British and European lightweight champion still works alongside his boxing career, despite headlining shows live on TNT Sports, and ranked No.1 in the UK and top 10 in the world.

This is why sponsors are so important to a fighter, as they could fund the fight night kit, which could be anything from £500 upwards, and take away many of the costs that come with being a professional athlete. If a boxer is able to get a few sponsors on board, then they could receive enough money to train full-time, which is considered a luxury to most aspiring young fighters. 

Some are fortunate enough to have considerate employers who may allow them time off, such as the last few weeks of camp. But what’s abundantly clear here is that most pros are full-time employees and part-time boxers, and any pro that can afford to train full-time considers themselves to be very privileged.

Debutant with a TV deal:

A successful amateur that’s won multiple national titles or Olympic medals and created a big buzz, will walk straight into a lucrative deal with a big promoter, such as Eddie Hearn or Frank Warren in the UK.

Most of the time, these promoters will try to outbid each other to secure the signature, which could then attract high signing on fees. An amateur that’s created a big buzz, such as an Olympic or World champion, could attract six-figure offers before they’ve even turned professional.

For an outstanding amateur that shows potential, a national ABA champion for example, but not quite as sought after as an Olympian, they could get offered a deal to be paid per round. For example, the lowest deal would probably start at around £1,000 per round. This means if the boxer has a four-round fight, they will receive £4,000 in wages. They could also sell an allocation of tickets to their fans where they are able to earn a few thousand extra.

Depending on levels, these deals could rise to £2,000 or £3,000 per round, and even higher.

Journeyman

For anyone that’s not overly familiar with boxing, a journeyman is probably a term they’ve not heard of before. The job title is aptly bestowed upon professional boxers that will travel the country to fight in the away corner against the home prospect, with little ambition of winning. Instead, their main goal will be to come through the four or six rounds unscathed so that they can fight again next week.

If any pro boxer is knocked out in a fight, they are banned from competing again for a month, under the BBBofC’s strict rules.

One of the most popular journeymen of recent times was Johnny Greaves, a likeable Londoner who had 100 pro bouts, losing 96. 

He had 50 unlicensed fights, beating former pro boxers and winning titles, so he turned pro off the back of that success and was offered a ticket deal, as mentioned earlier. The offer didn’t sound financially rewarding enough, so he told the promoter he would chew it over and put down the phone. A minute later, the phone rung back, and he was told, “Ok, you don’t have to sell tickets, you turn up in the away corner against a prospect anywhere in the UK and you get paid around £1,200 per fight.” And that’s how he decided to become a journeyman.

He once fought seven times in two months, earning close to £10k on top of his monthly wages as a painter and decorator.

Image Credits: Scott Heavey/Getty Images

Regional title fight

For a Southern Area title fight, there has to be purse bids submitted to the British Boxing Board of Control, where the promoters of the two boxers scheduled to clash will bid for the rights to stage the fight. 

The winning bid will be able to host the fight on their show and hand as many advantages to their home fighter as possible. These bids could start from around £6,000 onwards. If the title is vacant, then each challenger receives £3,000 each. Otherwise, it’s split 60-40 between champion and challenger.

National title fight

A British title fight, for example, can work out quite lucrative, but it still varies greatly. Usually, the purse bids for a British title fight will be between £50,000-£300,000, as yet another loose example.

Frank Warren once bid £300k to stage Chris Eubank Jr. vs Tommy Langford in 2016, which was a very high amount at the time, although the fight never actually came to fruition. Langford won the vacant Lonsdale belt against Sam Sheedy instead, but for considerably less.

A year earlier, in 2015, Anthony Joshua reportedly pocketed £4million for his British title fight with Dillian Whyte, which was a sellout show at the 20,000-capacity O2 Arena and was also a pay-per-view event, with over 400,000 buys. The magnitude of the event, the star status of the boxers involved and the intense bad blood between them is what elevated the occasion, and subsequently the money available to pay the purses.

Going back even further, Londoner Matt Marsh fought British super-bantamweight champion Esham Pickering at the York Hall in 2008 and was paid £16,000 as the challenger. He won the Lonsdale belt that night after an emphatic effort, then defended it to his biggest rival Rocky Dean five months later, and earned 25% less as the champion, paid only £12,000 instead. Pay packets in this sport often make no sense!

So, the differing amounts involved for the exact same belt is quite staggering – from £12k to £4million!

World title fight

This is going to show even more varying amounts, but at least, up at this level, it will always start with a worthwhile payday.

The WBA (the oldest governing body in boxing) has a minimum amount of $200,000 to bid for their world titles, which equates to around £150,000. The champion takes 75%, which means the challenger could be paid less than £40,000 for a world title fight. Sounds unfair, but at least the earnings are worth stepping into the ring for. It could be a whole year’s salary in one night.

One of the most recent world title purse bids were recently called by the International Boxing Federation for Jaron Ennis vs Karen Chukhadzhian, which is a rematch that has very little interest in it, despite ‘Boots’ Ennis being a big star. P2M-Box Promotion won with a bid of $2,000,53.10, which trumped Matchroom’s lowly $1,566,666 offer.

This means that there’s only just over £1.5million to be split between the two contenders for a world title fight. Due to their recent ruling, the champion will receive 65%, which will be approximately £975k, and the challenger will earn just over £500k for their 35% stake.

Considering Ennis is chasing a fight with pound-for-pound great, Terence Crawford, his wages are considerably deflated to that of the man he is after, who earned over $25million for his undisputed welterweight showdown with Errol Spence Jr. in 2023, where all four world titles were on the line.

For the undisputed heavyweight championship, that took place in May 2024, the ‘a-side’ Tyson Fury received the larger 70/30 split, despite bringing just one belt to the table – the WBC. Undefeated, unified champ, Usyk, put up his WBA, IBF, WBO, IBO belts, but received less than half of what Tyson was paid. He pocketed around $45million compared to the ‘The Gypsy King’s’ $100million-plus.

Of course, the sport’s biggest stars can command much higher paydays, whether they are fighting for a world championship or not. Arguably the biggest name in boxing over the past 10 years is Mexican megastar Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez.

The world’s 48^th highest paid athlete has been waged between $12million (for his 2013 fight with Floyd Mayweather) and in excess of $40million for his trilogy fight with Gennadiy Golovkin 3.

He has also signed lucrative deals with Golden Boy and DAZN. His groundbreaking partnership with sports streaming platform DAZN, agreed in 2018, was worth $365million for an 11-fight deal.

Now he is a free agent, he recently valued himself at $150-200million when David Benavidez approached him for a fight. According to trainer and father, Benavidez Sr., they accepted just $5million for this fight, but Canelo priced himself out with the nine-figures demand, and David moved up to light-heavyweight instead, meaning boxing fans around the world were robbed of the biggest fight that everyone really wants to see right now.

The former super-middleweight world champion, David Benavidez Jr., was even quoted saying, “F*** the money, lets just give the fans what they want and have a war”, which refreshingly shows that for some boxers it’s not all about the money.

Below are the top 10 biggest paydays in boxing fights, calculated by basic purses before PPV buys and other add-ons are included.