What with Calzaghe & Jones handling the promotional side of things for their fight, do you think we have just witnessed the beginning of the decline in using promoters and is this a good thing? Personally I didnt think much of the under card but then again it probably would not have been any different had a promoter been involved and in terms of building fight hype I dont think a promoter could have done anymore than Jones/Calzaghe did. Obviously they had thier respective promotional companies behind them and no doubt had a team of people working for them but do we really need the Don Kings (funny dude that he is) and thier self serving services?
Of course we do! Calzaghe and Jones are two of the biggest names in boxing, it's easy for them to create hype and set up fights. But what about a fighter on the way up? Promoters want the best for their fighters, albeit for selfish reasons, but they guide fighters careers in the best direction they can
Yes i think it is important to have a good promoter because with all the work of promoteing this fight joe calzaghe was 8ib over wieght the morning of the weigh in and if he had a promoter the wieght would have been much more comfortably lost
It would be great if all the promoters got cut out of the big fights. They serve themselves more than the sport. More fragmentation of the paradigm is good because the business of boxing needs to dissolve before it can be rebuilt. Let the greed rule until it implodes.
I think at that level they dont for the big fights of that magnitude but the undercards of the Golden boy and Don King productions have been horible and it was no exception with Jones/Calzage
I agree fighters starting out need promoters/managers but surely when it gets to a certain level all the fighters need is to get television on board. With regards promoters being match makers, well as long as their around they'll make "business" decisions and fights that should happen will never happen.
It's capitalism. If you cut out promoters from big fights where they'll get the most money for helping boxers climb the ladder, they'll have almost no reason to promote anymore. It all levels off.
Please understand this: HBO was the promoter! Some cards are promoted by GBP for example, a company doing their own shows and HBO just accepting it like the Casamayor-JMM PPV. Others like Mayweather-DLH are 'co-promotions' as HBO plays a large part on the money side. Danny Jacobs can't promote his own shows, neither Steve Cunningham. Being at the position Roy earned during the years of success and after the 510.000 buys he made in the Tito fight, him and Hopkins-beater Calzaghe didn't need promoters - they let HBO do 70% of the stuff - which was 24/7, adverisements etc. Calzaghe and Jones only attended at some press conferences and easily made a deal with Madison Square Garden with HBO executives behind their backs. HBO had it all planned. It was easy work for the fighters, although this text message deal was pretty cool if you ask me. :thumbsup The undercard suffered this non-existent promotion, it was horrible. Of course they couldn't ask King or Warren to put some of their fighters on the show, could they?
Now I don't like the system but I don't know if you recall any of RJJ's fights after he separated from HBO. They were highly unpublicized and uneventful PPV bombs held in barns and high school gymnasiums vs. stiffs. Attendance #'s included 4 mares, some piglets, and some chickens that managed to escape from the cage. Add the gym teacher, too. They even let the person who makes the daily announcements in the HS introduce the fighters over the PA. It was a real class event that generated alotta cash and two quality wins for RJJ.
