I've been watching boxing most of my 50-ish years and am trying to remember when promoters decided to start putting themselves front and centre. Certainly in the 80s the likes of King and Warren would routinely be on camera after a fight selling it like Hagler-Hearns or flogging their man as Willie Pep's second coming even if it was a 12-round bore fest - but prior to that I can't remember any. Nowadays promoters are ten-a-penny doing YouTube and it seems to be routine for them to be on camera - to the extent Eddie has his own microphone on DAZN and he mentioned recently that DAZN prefer him to be at their events even if he's not promoting them. When did this all start and is it healthy? If anything it kind of exposes the likes of Shalom who aren't showmen even if it means nothing to the fights they put up...
It has always been the case. Always. It makes sense really, promoters were a constant source of ink for newspapermen before radio. They often ran press conferences in the 40s ("there's the hand that will count the money"). Forever, basically.
Yeah, I assumed so but just don't recall it. You would see King in press conferences in footage of old Ali/Foreman fights but not much of Arum for example. I remember in the 80s the likes of Ambrose Mendy getting involved too. Apart from King though, they were never really the centre of attention like promoters are now - maybe it's just the YouTube generation needing motormouths and promoters are just naturals at it, but I don't need to hear from Shalom, Warren, Sauerland, Hearn after every single fight.
At least Warren offers some boxing insight. Hearn’s post-fight speech is usually just “this is a superstar you’re looking at, next year we’ll be selling out [insert fighters football teams stadium]!” Or if it’s a woman making her pro debut she’ll be fighting for a world title next month.
