Lawrence Okolie and Kevin Lerena pay tribute to the #PurseBidHeads as their WBC flyweight title fight heads to a September 20 trial. Photo credit: WBC Boxing
The #PurseBidHeads will have to wait another two weeks to find out promotional rights for a title in boxing’s eighteenth division.
An October 1 date has been set for the Lawrence Okolie-Kevin Lerena purse hearing. Okolie is set to make a mandatory defense of his WBC flyweight title. However, the two-division title roster was no match for Lerena’s team in their second scheduled round of negotiations.
The two sides reneged on a previous agreement, drawing the WBC’s scorn. The president of the sanctions body, Mauricio Sulaiman, originally asked for a September 20 deadline and hearing. A decision was made to instead hold the session on a Tuesday, during the WBCs Coffee Tuesday weekly meeting.
“The mandatory title fight has to go back to a purse,” Sulaiman previously confirmed. “The original agreement expired.”
According to WBC rules, ten percent of the highest accepted bid will be escrowed as a winning bonus. Okolie (20-1, 15 knockouts) will receive the favorable end of a 70-30 split of the remaining balance.
Environment has Poland’s Lukasz Rozanski in the first round to win the title on May 26 in Rzeszow. “The Big Sauce” knocked out Rozanski (15-1, 14 KOs) three times to capture the WBC featherweight title.
With the win, Okolie became a two-division title holder – for those who recognize the WBC created weight class. The 2016 Great Britain Olympian previously held the WBO cruiserweight title. That reign ended in his first career loss when he dropped a decision to Chris Billam-Smith last May in Bournemouth, England.
South Africa’s Lerena (30-3, 14 KOs) enters the title fight on the heels of a loss. It came in at heavyweight, though it was a credible performance. The 32-year-old southpaw was outpointed by undefeated heavyweight Justis Huni on the March 8 Anthony Joshua-Francis Ngannou card in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
It snapped a two-fight winning streak following a third-round knockout loss to Daniel Dubois. Lerena nearly won the secondary WBA heavyweight title after dropping Dubois (21-2, 20 KOs) three times in the opening round of their December 2022 fight. Dubois rallied to drop him twice en route to victory and has since won the IBF belt. He defends against Joshua (28-3, 25 KOs) this weekend in London.
Lerena previously held the IBO cruiserweight title. The belt is a big deal in South Africa, but largely WGAF to the rest of the world. The creation of the bridgeweight division was a perfect fit for Lerena and others like him who are too small for heavyweight. He outpointed Ryad Merhy in their WBC title eliminator last May 13 in Kempton Park, South Africa.
