Promoters Plague Professional Boxing Today
In the old days of boxing, if you wanted to set up a professional fight, you went into a promoter’s office, smoked a cigar and got down to brass tacks. Terms were arranged, and deals formalized with a gentleman's handshake. How the times have changed.
Boxers have always been at the will of the handlers. That goes without saying. But the game has changed today, and the stakes (read: money) have never been higher. The common denominator of past years was simple and shameless: to give the world the best fighters, and to have them slug it out to determine the best.
Today that’s a second rate goal, if not a third or fourth. First, of course, are contract terms: how much money is going to go where, to x, y, z.
If boxers have always been at the will of their handlers, what has changed today is the degree to which this is the case. Back in the days of Joe Louis there were no real big-time handlers. Promoters were scattered all across the country, knew each other by word of mouth or relation to the business, but that was basically it.
Some were more known than others, sure, but Louis’s promotional team says volumes about the time. Despite being the superstar of his day, he was managed by John Roxborough, a small-town Detroit handler guy known only for the mentioned reason.
This could never happen today in boxing. To be successful today, fighters are forced to sign on with multi-million-dollar-generating promotional companies that house upwards of thirty fighters. And should they take a more independent path, they suffer the consequences.
There have been countless cases of this in the last decade. And nobody profits from it; not the fighters, who waste their peak periods failing to get top fights or purses, nor the fans. Especially not the fans.
At the same time, the answer isn’t to sign on with a big namer—that just means as a fighter you’re at the mercy of a contract that probably isn’t in your best interests.
Many fighters have suffered on that account recently due to botched promotional gags, including two-time welterweight champion Paul Williams; current WBA middleweight world champion Felix Sturm; current IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute; current heavyweight champions the Klitschko brothers; and the list goes on.
Paul Williams is a definite contender in the boxing world who has defeated A-lister Antonio Margarito (who himself fought Shane Mosley and co.). But nobody knows who Williams is because of shotty, small-time promotion. In fact Williams is billed as boxing’s “most avoided fighter,” and that has nothing to do with his skill set.
Felix Sturm has been inactive for over a year due to legal disputes with his former promoter, Universum Promotions. After feeling he was getting the short end of the business stick, Sturm stated he would retire over fighting for the company again. At this point, the company held him at standstill for a full year, declaring that should he try to fight with another company he would face the legal consequences (his contract has since run out with the company).
Even the Manny Pacquiao – Floyd Mayweather Jr. mega fight, which is currently on the back burner, is a result of a promotional short circuit between Top Rank and whoever represents Mayweather (officially, nobody, but Golden Boy Promotions for the last four fights).
The problem is that fights aren’t made today with the interest of the fans in mind. And this ultimately harms the sport, and decreases its non-monetary value. Worse, as things get on, it doesn’t look like any kind of change is imminent. Just the opposite.
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