In case you haven't already heard the news, Dan Rafael reports that the Hopkins vs. Adamek fight that had many of us excited is dead in the water.
What? Hopkins behaving like a delusional child in his pre-fight negotiations? There's a shocker. But this dodgy move really stands out for its lameness, even for B-Hop.
According to Rafael, Golden Boy and Hopkins offered Adamek and Main Events a "flat fee" of $500,000 for the fight, which is completely ridiculous, given that HBO had already expressed an interest to the tune of three million plus, which doesn't include the nice gate that the fight would have drawn in Newark (or pretty much anywhere else with a strong Polish community nearby). Apparently, they wouldn't even negotiate a percentage split.
Now true, team Adamek's offer of a 60-40 split in Adamek's favor wasn't realistic, but that was just an opening position for what they thought would be a negotiation. Hopkins and Golden Boy aren't even talking "split," and Adamek has rejected their cynical posturing, as any champion of his stature should have.
To his credit, Dan Rafael does make it clear that Hopkins is to blame, but to my mind, his article understates just how messed-up this offer was. Refusing to negotiate a split and offering such an unrealistic "fee" for Adamek's presence is insulting not only to Adamek but to any fan who pays attention to this kind of stuff. A business decision this unrealistic is pretty suspect. It seems to suggest that for whatever reason, Hopkins was having second thoughts about the fight. And as I have already stated, I favored Hopkins, though I think Adamek poses a real threat and would have given him a much stiffer challenge than Pavlik.
Either that, or they're just being assholes, and they'll start whistling a different tune when they realize that Adamek and Duva aren't total chumps. In which case, they're playing fans for chumps by subjecting us to this kind of drama.
I'm tempted to just say screw Hopkins and screw this fight if they're even going to think about acting this way. But in the end, I still want to see the fight...