Don King Teams With Sauerland In Klitschko vs. Valuev Negotiations

Don King Productions and Sauerland Event have countered K2 Promotions latest offer to former two-time WBA heavyweight champion Nikolai “Giant Russian” Valuev (50-2, 34 KOs) to face WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (39-2, 37 KOs) with a deal calling for a 60-40 percentage split.

“They approached us with a $1 million offer for Valuev to face Vitali, and Sauerland Event and I told them we would like $4 million for the fight,” King said. “Now they’ve come back to us with a $2 million guarantee. We countered with a 60-40 split of revenue.

“K2 is making the money more important than the attraction. They are promoting the money while I promote the attraction. The attraction recoups your investment and leads to profit. People-wise and money-wise, this is the way you have to think—and people-wise is the most important.”

King said he and Sauerland Event, on behalf of Valuev, are convinced that K2 Promotions, on behalf of Vitali Klitschko, are focusing on obtaining Valuev for the lowest amount of money when they should be focusing on auctioning the ability to host the event and television rights to the highest bidders.

“If K2 Promotions auctions off the rights to become the host site for this extravaganza as well as television rights to Germany, Russia and Ukraine, we believe that alone will bring in over $10 million,” King said. We are so confident in this that we are willing to risk guaranteed money in favor of 40 percent of the revenue stream, which we believe will bring team Valuev $4 million or more.”