Marketting a fighter..

the best marketed fight in the time i have followed boxing was Hatton-Mayweather everyone was speaking about it in britain

 

The Tyson team did a brilliant job, but they nicked (and perhaps to a point, improved) the formula used by Trainer and Dundee with Leonard.

 

Joe Louis's managment team did the equivalent job to Tysons by the standards of the time.

No heavyweight prior to that had enjoyed a manager and promotional team from the start of his career.

No contender before or after had been brought along so quickly.

Nine months into Louis's profesional debut he was fighting Primo Carnera in what was meant to be an elimination tournament for a shot at Max Baers title.

A poster was published before that fight depicting Louis punching the top off the empire state building, with the caption:

"Big brown bomber hits town".

 

Bigcat, they did market Tyson better than most any other fighter gets marketed. Everyone should take several pages out of their book. I must say, though, that a major part of their success was because they really had something to market.

Mike Tyson had a combination of hand speed and punching power, matched together with an aggressive style, unseen for 60 years in the heavyweight division. Not since Jack Dempsey had there been such a force to be reckoned with.

I often wonder what would have happened had Roy Jones Jr. been marketed in such a way. Jones didn't really become a story until he broke from his father, and HBO got wind of him.

 

The Tyson marketing job is overated. Any figher who knocks out the champion in one round, unifies the division for the first time in years, KOs the peoples champ in one round, knocks out an all time great in Larry Holmes, puts together a string of one punch knockouts and/or totally dominates all his competition is going to be easy to market. From memory, they tried to market him as a nice respectable guy in the Joe Louis mould in those early days, but that pretty much backfired!

I think that whent it comes to marketing, Ali is close to without pier. Comeback George is another who was well marketed well. Jack Johnson, believe it or not, imo was one of if not the best marketed fighters ever. He drew on the race angle and it produced a ton of money for him, and even managed to get him the first ever black title fight. It was different in that he was marketed as a bad guy but it was still effective. John L sullivan also may be right up there. The thing though, with all of these guys is that they made the marketing with in ring performance.

If you want to look at fighters whose reputation/career was greatly enhanced by marketing, then i would think of someone like a Gerry Cooney is as good as anyone.

 

out of intrest is anyone here posting

caught up in the tyson marketing maybe as a kid and one of the reasons why you like boxing

im abit after tysons prime born 1993. but i would be intrested to know how many people were inspired by him

 

When I saw the title of this thread, I thought it would be asking for views on how to market a fighter, and I thought "What Cayton & Jacobs did with Tyson."

Tyson was well known by boxing fans before he even turned pro, and when he did turn pro he fought often and on TV. And, as was mentioned, Jacobs & Cayton sent videos to local news stations across the country (from what I've heard) after each fight. True, he was a special talent who backed up the marketing. Cayton tried to do the same thing with Jeremy Williams early on, but Williams' career didn't pan out as well.

Ray Leonard's team also did a spectacular job. He was on free tv almost once a month and featured enough in the mainstream media by early 1979 that my great aunt liked him, and she hated boxing.

 

I was a kid (12ish), and the publicity did perk up my interest, but I remember the old man telling me it was pure hype and we would not know how good Tyson could be until he fought for a championship.

Now although Tyson did walk into the Berbick fight a fairly warm favourite (1-4), the fight was virtually pick-em all the way up to the final week, as Tyson just seemed too good to be true.

Also if you listen to the American commentary in the fight, although Tyson was winning comfortable, the hits Berbick did get in (in the first two minutes), got the commentary team going, as they suggested either man could go.....

 

Nigel Benn........

 

Having a pony tail and screaming "I'm Bad", is not good marketing!

 

he was marketed as a new undefeatable champpion akin to Tyson but Watson shattered that

 

No, after Logan, he was marketed as a big puncher, who got tagged, hence was never in a bad fight. Logan showed he clearly was very beatable, but was fun to watch.

Tyson in the same period looked unbeatable, and even pre Watson, Benn was clearly along way behind the likes of Iron Mike.

But of course Benn had potential, and potential that developed into a truly world class fighter in the early mid 90s......

 

Other Marketing phenomenons (way beyond their boxing ability):

Hatton - was a British favourate before he ever took on a top 10 contender
Delahoya - we all know this 1
Hamed - brought the 7figure+++ sums to FW boxing, the explosiveness/excitiment, entrances, hype

 

naz was a great hype job. what about the work eubank did in making him public enemy number 1

barry mcguigan in uniting a divided nation was another master stroke