All Star Boxing (France) have beat Premier Boxing Champions in a purse bid to stage the WBC welterweight final eliminator between Souleymane Cissokho and Canada’s Cody Crowley.

The Paris based firm who promote Cissokho outbid PBC with a sum of $477,777. As per WBC rules, 10 percent of the purse will go to the winner, the remaining 90 percent will be split 50/50. 

“We are very happy that we will stage the fight in Paris,” All Star’s Jerome Abiteboul said exclusively to BoxingScene. “Cissokho is one of the big hopes for France after winning a bronze medal at the Rio Olympics. He’s a good man, very smart and very technical. He’s the future of boxing in France, so it was important for us to win the bid and secure the fight.

“Souleymane is from Paris, you know, he’s from the hood. He’s one of the best fighters in my stable today. We love working with him and we just couldn’t let this fight go to the U.S. It was important to focus on this and outbid them a little bit. We are very happy to beat PBC and Tom Brown. Their bid was $355,000. We wanted to bid something around 400, then I had a feeling of 450. But I have a thing for number seven, that’s why I added 77,777. It’s my lucky number.”

Cissokho (17-0, 9 KOs) is currently ranked No. 2 for the title currently held by Terence Crawford. The Frenchman scored a wide decision win over Isaias Lucero in Monaco last November. Crowley (22-0, 9 KOs) sits in first place with Marrio Barrios just ahead as the interim champion with Crawford expected to vacate. The Canadian defeated Abel Ramos in a majority-decision win over a year ago. 

“We want to bring boxing back to France,” Abiteboul explained. “We had a difficult time with Tony Yoka and his performances. We put a lot of focus on him with our broadcast partners Canal +. But, at the time Cissokho was one of our prospects fighting on these cards with Yoka. We were able to win the WBC silver belt against Thulani Mbenge. Then he had the defense in Monaco with Matchroom, but now we can bring him back to Paris, where is from. He has a good fanbase in France and we need to promote the fight with good support from these fans. We of course hope he wins and will be mandatory for the title. 

“We first need to focus on this fight with Crowley. It won’t be an easy fight. You have to look at this from our perspective, we are promoting the show to give us the best chance to win the fight and then get the title later this year. This is our goal. That’s why it was so important to win this bid, it was a big step in what we want to do. We are looking at two arenas in Paris, but we do have the Olympics here this summer, so it would be hard to do a big event in Paris before June 15. So we look to do it before, at the beginning of June. We have good venues in Paris, we are looking at Adidas Arena and the Accor Arena, just round the corner. But Paris is important to him, so we need to come to Paris.”