Kathy Duva preserves a bygone promotional virtue
Boxing, like every other professional sport out there, is big business. While fans understand the business component of any high-grossing sport, their allegiance nevertheless naturally falls on the side of the sport themselves. After all, not many people watch basketball because they like what the NBA has done with the concept of cap space and salaries for each team as a viable business model. People watch sports because they like them, and are interested in the competitors.
Boxing is no different. From the perspective of boxing enthusiasts, boxing is about the sweet science of the sport itself. It’s about legendary fights and the tireless pursuit of them. But from the perspective of promoters, as well as a host of other money-hungry middlemen, boxing is no longer, nor was it ever, about the sport; it’s always been about business prospects. To a big promoter, boxing isn’t a sport, it’s a stake at the markets for financial compensation.
This in mind, it’s easy to see how big promotional interest can vary from fan interest, as well as individual fighter interest. To see this, all one has do is look at the current foxtrot between the two best fighters on the planet, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. Every self-respecting boxing fan wants these two guys to put the gloves on in the ring, and would pay hard-earned money to see it. So why hasn’t the fight happened? Everyone knows why. Because business arrangements on both sides of the promotional fence have yet to be agreed upon.
The truth is that business politics run boxing, just as they run every other sports institution (NHL, NBA, NFL, etc.). But in a world where business does not often look out for the interests of those who put their hearts into the sport, Main Event CEO Kathy Duva offers a refreshing approach to the business of promotion.
“My thinking is that fighters need to be active to be excellent and our first responsibility to the fighters we promote is to enhance their ability to be excellent, so they win the fights when they’re in them," Duva said to popular website Maxboxing last week. "It occurred to me that if we were to wait around until there’s a date available on Showtime or HBO - as a lot of fighters have done - we’d be waiting it out for a very long time. You just can’t build a business on something you have absolutely no control over and no ability to influence.”
There’s something genuine about Duva’s words that’s hard to deny. There’s a sense of camaraderie and family ties in her statement to first and foremost make fighters better fighters. This is the equivalent of a friend telling you: “I’m going to make you better at what you’ve decided to do with your life; I’m going to sincerely try to help you out.”
That sounds pretty promising, right? It also sounds either naive or unusual, given that fighter – promoter relations generally centre around the omnipresent concern of how both parties can make more money (joining forces being the usual solution).
But Duva is serious. And the proof is on the paper: she recently helped Zab Judah get his own promotional company, Super Judah Promotions, up and running, so that he could demonstrate his own entrepreneurial talents.
Obviously, boxing is a different business from the one she got into back in the 70s, when Main Event was a family-operated business. One of the changes has been the addition of the broadcasting companies, such as HBO.
Because these networks broadcast fights based on a schedule they determine, the boxing world is often on their knees arranging fights with them. What’s more is that the stakes aren’t fair: promoters like Golden Boy have contractual deals with companies to give them unfair broadcasting advantage.
All the same, Duva vows she’ll fight on and preserve a bit of the promotional virtue that has so obviously escaped the business.
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