Eight Years of Not Knowing the Numbers
Marcus Cole has been a professional heavyweight for eight years. In that time, he has fought twenty-six times, won twenty-two, held a European title and challenged for a world championship. He has earned headline purses ranging from £8,000 for his debut to seven figures for the biggest night of his career. And for the majority of those fights, he did not know what he actually took home until his accountant told him.
"You get told the number," Cole says. "Your promoter calls and says, 'I've got you a fight for X.' You hear X and you think that's what you're earning. Nobody tells you on that call what X actually becomes after everyone takes their cut."
Cole is not naive. He has been in the sport long enough to understand that the headline purse is not the take-home figure. But the specifics of each deduction layer — promoter percentages, manager fees, trainer fees, sanctioning body charges, tax withholdings — were never transparent to him before the contract was signed.
"I'd sign the contract, do the camp, fight the fight, and then find out three months later what I actually earned. By that point, I'd already committed the money in my head. The difference between what I thought I was getting and what I actually got was sometimes thirty percent."
The European Title Fight: A Lesson in Arithmetic
The fight that crystallised the problem for Cole was his European title bout in 2023. The headline purse was £850,000 — the largest of his career at that point and a figure that, in Cole's words, "changed how I thought about my future."
"I thought I was earning eight hundred and fifty grand. I started planning. I was going to pay off the mortgage, put money away for the kids, invest some. I was making life decisions based on that number."
The actual take-home, after all deductions, was less than a third of the headline figure. Cole declines to give the exact amount but is clear about the magnitude of the gap. "It was less than £280,000. When my accountant walked me through it, I couldn't believe how many lines there were between the headline and the net. Promoter. Manager. Trainer. Sanctioning body. Tax. Insurance. It just kept going."
He is not bitter — he understands that each party in the chain provides a service. But he is emphatic that the fighter should know the arithmetic before committing to the fight, not after.
"If I'd known the take-home was sub-£300k, would I still have taken the fight? Probably. It was a European title. But I'd have negotiated differently. I'd have challenged the manager's percentage. I'd have asked the promoter about cost coverage. I'd have made informed decisions instead of just saying yes to the headline."
The Purse Simulator: Validation Within £4,000
Cole adopted Lumio Fight in early 2026, ahead of his planned ring return. The first thing he did was load the European title fight into the purse simulator — retroactively, using the actual contract terms and deduction rates.
"I wanted to test it against reality," he says. "I entered the headline purse, the promoter's percentage, the manager's fee, the trainer's cut, the sanctioning body charge, the insurance cost and the UK tax rate. The simulator gave me a take-home figure."
The figure was within £4,000 of what his accountant had calculated two years earlier.
"Four grand on an eight-fifty headline. That's less than half a percent variance. If I'd had this tool in 2023, I'd have known the take-home before I signed the contract. That knowledge would have changed the conversation."
Saudi Arabia Fight Modelling: The Negotiation That Changed
In March 2026, Cole's promoter presented an opportunity for a fight in Saudi Arabia. The headline purse was significant. Cole's first instinct was to say yes.
"Before Lumio, I would have said yes immediately. A number like that, in Saudi, on a big card — you don't turn it down. But I'd learned my lesson from the European title. I told my promoter I'd come back to him in forty-eight hours."
Cole loaded the proposed terms into the purse simulator and toggled the jurisdiction to Saudi Arabia. The Saudi model applied the local withholding tax rate, the UK credit relief calculation, the promoter's percentage (which was different from his UK structure), and the sanctioning body fee for the title on the line.
"The take-home was better than I expected for the Saudi fight specifically because of the tax treatment. But the simulator also showed me that if the same fight happened in the UK at the same headline, I'd take home roughly fifteen percent less. That gave me leverage."
Cole went back to his promoter with a counter-proposal. "I told him I'd fight in the UK instead, but the headline needed to reflect the tax difference. We negotiated an increase that covered the gap. Without the simulator, I wouldn't have known the gap existed. I'd have either fought in Saudi at the original terms or fought in the UK at terms that left money on the table."
Weight Trajectory: Replacing the Notebook
Cole's weight management during camp had always been tracked informally. "My trainer had a notebook. He'd weigh me every morning and write it down. If I asked him how I was tracking, he'd flick through the pages and give me a rough answer."
The Fight Camp Planner's weight trajectory tool replaced the notebook with a projected curve. From the first day of camp, Cole's daily weight was plotted against the target, with the required rate of loss calculated and adjusted daily.
"In week four, the trajectory showed I was about two pounds behind pace. Under the old system, my trainer might have noticed that by week six or seven. The platform caught it in week four, when we could adjust the nutrition plan gradually instead of doing a hard cut in the final week."
Cole is particularly pointed about the safety implications. "I've done hard cuts before. Everyone in boxing has. They're dangerous. They affect your performance. They affect your health. The earlier you know you're behind pace, the less drastic the intervention needs to be. Two pounds in week four is nothing. Two pounds in the final three days is a problem."
What Transparency Actually Means
Cole frames the Lumio experience in terms that extend beyond his own career. "I'm a heavyweight contender with a good team around me. If I didn't know my take-home from a European title fight, what about the kid fighting on a small hall show for £3,000 who thinks he's earning £3,000? His promoter takes thirty percent, his manager takes twenty, the board takes their fee, and he's walking away with less than half. Does he know that before he signs?"
He does not wait for an answer. "He doesn't. And until now, there wasn't a tool that could show him. That's what the purse simulator is. It's not just a calculator. It's the thing that makes boxing honest about its own economics."
Cole's next fight is scheduled for June. For the first time in his career, he will walk into the ring knowing exactly what the fight is worth.