Epic Sports & Entertainment has won a purse bid for the IBF heavyweight title eliminator between former heavyweight world title challenger Kubrat Pulev (25-1, 13 KOs) and Jarrell ‘Big Baby’ Miller (21-0-1, 18 KOs). Epic Sports won the purse bid with a winning bid of $2,111,111, topping the next highest bid of $1,000,010, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN.
Epic Sports & Entertainment, with which longtime boxing attorney John Wirt is involved, surprisingly won an IBF purse bid last month to promote a Pulev-Dillian Whyte elimination match. Epic Sports & Entertainment bid $1,500,111 – more than Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing ($831,111), which promotes Whyte, and Team Sauerland ($801,305) to win that purse bid.
The winner of the Pulev vs. Miller fight will be the International Boxing Federation mandatory challenger to IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua (21-0, 20 KOs). Joshua also has a WBA mandatory due against 38-year-old Alexander Povetkin. It’s quite possible that Joshua will take care of the WBA mandatory first before he gets to the IBF mandatory.
Brooklyn’s Miller stands to make what would be a career-high $527,777.75, his 25 percent of the winning bid.
ulev hasn’t fought since defeating American Kevin Johnson (32-9-1, 16 KOs) by unanimous decision in a 12-rounder in April 2017 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Miller most recently defeated France’s Johann Duhaupas (37-5, 24 KOs) by unanimous decision in a 12-rounder April 28 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
