EBU purse bid and update

By Marco Bratusch

At yesterday’s EBU purse bid in Rome, Italy, Spanish firm Rimer Box quite unexpectedly outbid Maravilla Box in order to promote the rematch between current European featherweight champion Marc Vidal (11-1-5, 5 KOs) and former IBF world titlist Kiko Martinez (38-8-2, 28 KOs), who is now in the mandatory position, once again. Rimer box offered 26,113 Euros which happened to be enough to edge the 22,111 Euros that Maravilla Box put in the envelope. No date has been mentioned by the winning promoter thought the fight might likely be taking place next October.

Last May, the first encounter between the two fighters suddenly ended after a fast-paced start, as a cut occurred in round got worse in the following round, leading the fight to be stopped by referee Massimiliano Bianco who considered the injury as the result of an accidental headbutt. Martinez, a former three-time European champion in the lighter 122-pound division, was looking to further boost his boxing accomplishments in a higher weight class while Vidal was his first defense of his title, which he won outpointing Sergio Blanco a year ago in Castellbisbal, Spain.

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European heavyweight champion Agit Kabayel (18-0, 13 KOs) was granted another voluntary defense of his belt next October in a card promoted by Ulf Steinforth’s SES Boxing, which manages his career. Kabayel was supposed to take on mandatory opponent Aleksander Dimitrenko next but the challenger declined to take the chance few hours before the related purse bid was set to take place last week. The reason is what was already rumored days before in the boxing landscape, with Dimitrenko to take on former world title challenger Bryant “By-By” Jennings, from Philadelphia, US, for the vacant WBO International belt on August 18 in Atlantic City, in a card promoted by Top Rank and screened on ESPN. For Kabayel, it will represent the fourth defense of his title, which he won two years ago stopping Christian Lewandowski in Magdeburg, Germany.