Up to $1 Million – Oleksandr Usyk Reveals the Cost of Fight Preparation

Undisputed heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk (23-0, 14 KOs) has revealed the staggering costs associated with preparing for a fight at the highest level.

According to the two-time undisputed champion, a training camp typically costs between $500,000 and $700,000, but in cases where a fight gets postponed, expenses can soar to $1 million.

- What are the biggest costs in championship boxing?

- A training camp can cost anywhere from $500,000 to $700,000. It’s a large ecosystem: paying the team, sparring partners, and everyone involved, renting training facilities and recovery centers, covering meals, accommodations, equipment, and transportation if needed.

There are also dynamic costs, including hiring medical specialists for testing and monitoring. Those can be very expensive.

If a fight gets postponed, expenses increase significantly. That happened before my first fight with Tyson Fury—there were two training camps, and the total cost was around $1 million.

- Some Western media outlets, citing anonymous sources, reported that the total prize pool for your first fight with Fury was nearly £100 million. You don’t comment on purses, but do you think organizers recoup their investments? Is this a profitable business for them?

- Each fighter has a personal contract with the organizers. What they earn is none of our business. So I can’t say for sure how much they profit.

However, my opinion is that they don’t always recoup their investment.

The fight broadcast rights alone were sold for over $100 million (a large portion of which goes to broadcasters). For Saudi Arabia, the priority is their image—establishing themselves on the global sports map. They may not be calculating it strictly in terms of profit from a single event.