Zepeda vs Hughes Purse: How Much Does a Title Eliminator Fight Pay?

Devin Haney vacated his unified lightweight titles and this year will be all about lightweight boxing. As a start, William Zepeda and Maxi Hughes will determine the next mandatory contender in an IBF and WBA title eliminator fight. Here is what we know about the Zepeda vs Hughes purse.

Boxing Fighter Pay: What Will Zepeda vs Hughes Be Paid in Las Vegas?

If you ask us and probably the bigger percentage of boxing fans who watched Hughes' last bout, he should have remained champion and this upcoming match would have had a very different scenario. Maxi Hughes faced George Kambosos in his third defense of the IBO lightweight championship and his performance should have been impressive enough for him to win again.

However, two of the judges scored the fight in favor of Kambosos and one had it scored a draw. This decision was immediately booed by the fans in the venue and statistically, Hughes was supposed to win.

A year later, Hughes will face William Zepeda in a title eliminator match that will decide one of the mandatory contenders for the unclaimed IBF and WBA belts.

As usual, the official Zepeda vs Hughes purse has not been disclosed yet but we can make a confident prediction following the previous paydays of the two fighters.

As a start, both fighters could earn big this weekend although there is no title on the line. We have secure information about the last three purses that Zepeda took home in 2022 and 2023.

Going back to his fight against Joseph Diaz in October 2022, reports confirmed that Zepeda earned a guaranteed purse of $300,000. Combined with the win bonus and additional incentives, his earnings jumped to over $500,000.

Next up, Zepeda faced Jaime Arboleda in April 2023. This bout marked a huge increase in his salary as Zepeda reportedly earned $450,000 as a guaranteed purse. To date, this is his career-high purse.

His last match was against Mercito Gesta in September 2023 and his purse was somehow considerably smaller. According to reports by CSAC, Zepeda got paid a guaranteed purse of $300,000 for this match.

With this said, we expect that his cut from the Zepeda vs Hughes purse to be somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000. This is the biggest fight of his career and it is a title eliminator match, so we expect a slight increase.

As for his opponent, Maxi Hughes, we can guarantee that he will be the better-paid fighter out of the two. Unfortunately, there is no record of his previous earnings and we cannot make a strictly accurate guess.

He last faced former WBA, IBF, and WBO lightweight champion George Kambosos and while his purse was never revealed, we know it was in the millions. Kambosos reportedly got paid a guaranteed purse of $6 million for this fight and this was when Hughes was the defending champion.

With this in mind, we believe that the Briton will secure a bigger chunk from the Zepeda vs Hughes purse. However, with no title on the line, we wouldn't bet on more than a million.