1) Purchased Ring Magazine 2) Partnership with AEG (Worldwide Sports Arenas) 3) Partnership with USA Boxing What do you think the repercussions of these three moves will be on the sport?
1. This one was a bad move. Now Ring has lost all credibility, and at 9 bucks a magazine, who is going to buy a biased rag? This months issue is basically a 9 dollar advertisement for Oscar's autobiography. 2. This was a good business move, but the major PPV fights are going to be in Atlantic City, MSG in NYC, or Vegas Casinos. If he did it to promote other sports, great move. 3. Amateur boxing is about as popular as smallpox.
Buying Ring magazine was a bad move, but an understandable one. I don't think there has been any stories of fighters getting short changed - from here in the UK though it seems that fighters have a totally different relationship with promoters than they do here. For instance, it seems that a GBP or Top Rank fighter can say to Schaefer or Arum 'get me so and so.....' and the fight generally happens, whereas here they seem to be employees of the promoter - who generally make a **** load of cash by using the fighters rather than promoting them. Joe Calzaghe was offered a lucrative deal with Gilette but was forced to turn it down by Frank Warren (I believe) and told to focus on some more meaningless defences of the WBO title. Generally, whatever Frank says, goes - Gary Lockett was simply a sacrificial lamb, whilst guys like Alex Arthur are served up whoever he wants, rather than getting big unification fights.
