Hall of Fame Boxing Promoter Don King has won a $1.1 million purse bid from the WBA for the right to promote a fight between WBA regular heavyweight champion Kubrat “The Cobra” Pulev and Michael “The Bounty” Hunter. King indicated the fight will take place on Saturday, August 23rd at a site to be determined. [Editor's note: In recent years, King has been notoriously bad about staging fights on their scheduled dates, and has repeatedly postponed or cancelled his fights]. It will be a true week of celebration during Fight Week as King will be celebrating his 94th birthday on August 20th. King said the location for the fight will be determined at a later date with Florida, Las Vegas, Ohio and Pennsylvania among the potential sites.

 

Fighting in his hometown of Sofia, Bulgaria, the crowd-favorite 44-year-old Pulev (32-3, 14 KOs) won the WBA regular title via a twelve-round unanimous decision win over Mahmoud Charr last December. [The WBA, like the other three major sanctioning bodies, recognizes Oleksandr Usyk as the true world heavyweight champion].

 

The Southern California native Hunter (24-2-2, 17 KOs) defeated Cassius Chaney in a twelve-round unanimous decision at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Fla. In his last fight in December, Hunter registered a fifth-round TKO over [unknown] Christian Larrondo Garcia in Mexico [Editor's note: In April 2024, Hunter lost an eight-round decision to heavyweight Artem Suslenkov that generally gets left off Hunter's record because the fight was promoted by the IBA. Boxingtalk has added that loss back into Hunter's record to arrive at 24-2-2].

 

Hunter’s only [other] career setback came back in 2017 when he lost a unanimous twelve-round decision to Usyk, who in December beat Tyson Fury to become just the third boxer to become an undisputed world champion in the two weight divisions in the “four-belt era”.