Oleksandr Usyk not linked to plans for record-breaking San Francisco boxing event, despite reports

Story by

Darshan Desai

Uncrowned

Wed, January 21, 2026 at 3:39 AM UTC

5 min read

You may have seen many of the same headlines about boxing's heavyweight king perpetuated by numerous media outlets this past week during the launch of Ed Pereira's newly formed iVisitBoxing (iVB) brand: "Oleksandr Usyk and Deontay Wilder set to fight in front of a record crowd on July 11 in San Francisco." However, according to Pereira himself, that news is unequivocally not correct.

"False," Pereira confirmed Tuesday on Uncrowned's "The Ariel Helwani Show" when asked if Usyk vs. Wilder is the fight iVB is targeting for its July 11 event.

"We did have chats with the Usyk team a little while ago, quite fruitful chats with them. Nothing was agreed. We've seen everything blow up about that."

Pereira told Uncrowned that while iVB does indeed hope to break the U.S. attendance record for a boxing event — 135,132 spectators set by the 1941 Tony Zale vs. Billy Pryor fight in Milwaukee — the fights and fighters featuring on iVB's potentially record-breaking July 11 outdoor boxing event in San Francisco have yet to be decided.

iVB officially confirmed its entry into boxing this past Friday with a launch press conference in San Francisco. The company plans to stage a minimum of 12 events in 2026, which will be "big," "special" and "iconic," Pereira said. The first of those events is targeted for April and will be announced at a press conference in February, he said.

Pereira also announced a relationship with YouTube to host those events. iVB's shows will broadcast on the YouTube platform, Pereira said, with some being free-to-air and others falling behind a nominal pay-per-view paywall. iVB intends to use YouTube to advertise its pay-per-views to the 2.5 billion user base on the platform and capitalize on other technological benefits, including content creator watchalongs, which have also been used by DAZN on-platform.

Most major boxing events taking place at the moment are funded by Saudi Arabia's General Entertainment Authority via Riyadh Season or Turki Alalshikh's "The Ring." iVB, however, is not entering boxing with a wealthy backer and will instead be relying on alternative funding to run its events.

“The way we’re looking at it is that we’re actually building it on three key pillars," Pereira said. "The first pillar is sponsorship. One of the key things that we're looking at is bringing in corporate sponsors. We're very lucky to have been working with [corporate sponsors] in the soccer space and the rugby space, and a lot of our partners that we've been working with in the soccer space see a natural kind of link between soccer and boxing — the audience is the same.

"The big soccer brands haven't had that link into boxing. If you look at the sponsors that currently support boxing, they’re not your big, blue-chip companies. For us, it's about bringing those guys into the boxing space, and they're going to do the heavy lift.

"The second side is through partners," Pereira continued. "For us, [it's] looking at partners when it comes to experiential zones. We're not just doing the boxing event, but actually creating a fan experience village, creating a food zone and a food village where we've got local California food vendors coming. They're bringing in quite a bit of the heavy lift as well when it comes to the investment side. You've got to find an experience village with about 20-30 different companies all backing it and being part of it.

"Thirdly, it’s YouTube. Having done a deal with YouTube, we’re really excited about that, and [the July 11 card] will be a pay-per-view event. The card level that we're looking to put on will be big and it will be a pay-per-view event. The pay-per-view and the associated ticket sales as well, that's where the money is going to come in from."

Pereira has first-hand experience working on Riyadh Season and "The Ring" events. His sports marketing company was responsible for the logistics of multiple Alalshikh events, including the Times Square card this past May. Pereira said his work on that event prompted multiple cities to reach out to him about staging similar spectacles, and one of those was San Francisco, where iVB is heading in July.

"There's two issues that we've got to overcome [for July], Pereira said. "The first issue is there's no card big enough to draw 150,000 [fans] in the U.S. But I will say this — I think the concept is that we're creating a festival. A festival for the city that we're in, that includes music, that includes the experiential zone, that includes the boxing. The boxing is the center and core of it, but it's not the only draw to it.

"We like to call it a mix between Coachella and world championship boxing fights. That's essentially what we have to do."

The current U.S. indoor boxing attendance record sits at 73,126 and was set by Matchroom's Saul "Canelo" Alvarez vs. Billy Joe Saunders unification fight in 2021. Pereira hopes to attract almost double that crowd, with a mixture of paid-for tickets and free attendance.

"We're looking at around 50% [paying fans and 50% free entry]," Pereira clarified.

"[With 70,000 paid tickets,] you've still got a stadium full of revenue. ... I think we said free for the majority — I think over 50% will be free. There will be paid-for tickets, it'll just be scaled."

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