Lou Dibella responds to Bob Arum’s appraisal of Andre Berto-Miguel Cotto
Andre Berto’s team has sharply responded to comments made by Top Rank CEO about the WBC welterweight champion ‘overpricing’ himself.
Arum suggested arranging a fight between Berto (26-0, 20 KOs) and his fighter, WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (35-2, 28 KOs), was proving difficult because Berto had grown accustomed to big HBO paydays and was expecting more than he ought
to be rightly entitled to.
In his words: “Berto shouldn't command anything like what HBO is paying him. Therefore, it makes it very, very difficult to make a big fight for Berto against somebody like a Miguel Cotto because the kid wants to be paid more than he would get paid for ordinary
fights. Therefore, he would be vastly overpaid. So it's very difficult.”
In response Lou Dibella, Berto’s promoter, snapped: “If Cotto's people really wanted to make the fight, and Arum really wanted to make the fight, then the fight would get made because we wouldn't price ourselves out of it.” He continued: “We have no problem
with Cotto making significantly more money and we never asked for anything that resembled Cotto's share of the pie, but if Bob believes that Berto is entitled to 25%, then he's right – then the fight is difficult to make,” suggesting Berto wouldn’t agree with
that amount.
Berto is scheduled to compete in a November 27 title bout with Freddy Hernandez. His last bout, against Carlos Quintana, was bought for $1.25-million by HBO, and this bout will be no different. Berto himself took home over $1-million in profit against
Quintana, despite less than 1000 people paying to be in attendance at the show.
The average amount doled out to promoters for ESPN’s Friday Night Fights is $30,000.
Mathematically, that means HBO calculates Berto-Hernandez to be worth 40 times the average ESPN equivalent bout, or 120 ESPN bouts. One HBO bout with Berto, or 120 ESPN bouts with upcoming prospects.
Dibella reiterated that Berto would be happy taking less money for a fight with Cotto, though the precise figure was not given. “Whenever me and Bob want to make a fight, the fight gets made,” Dibella said. “So I guess he doesn't want to make [this] fight.
Bob may say it's very difficult, but Bob knows that it's not very difficult to negotiate with me. I guess he wants to keep it in-house. And Miguel Cotto vs. [Julio Cesar] Chavez Jr. would be a public execution."
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