"Oscar never turned down anybody; HBO's Kery Davis is full of s**t!" -Bruce Trampler

http://www.maxboxing.com/news/promo-lead/the-art-of-matchmaking

Awesome article about the ins and outs of matchmaking. Check out these quotes from Trampler of Top Rank.

Trampler hammered home this idea of money taking precedence over matchmaking at the elite level with an anecdote. “Winning and losing is really incidental to the business of boxing. All throughout Oscar’s career when he was a big draw, we’d go to L.A. and sit with him and his father or brother or whoever his adviser was because it changed often. And we’d all go through our spiel. I’d get up and say, ‘Here’s your choice of opponents. This guy’s a southpaw and he runs, like a Pernell Whitaker. This guy’s a big strong kid and he can punch, like a Terry Norris.’ You go through the pros and cons. I would say my bit. Then Joel Sr. would say his. Then Joel Jr. Then Bob Arum would say his.

“But you’d watch Oscar’s body language. Now we shared a respect for each other. He valued my opinion. But he’d be there flipping a pencil or rolling his eyes and when everyone was done speaking, he’d say, ‘Which one pays the most money? I’m not worried about my opponent or how I’m going to do. I can fight. Don’t worry about that. Which one pays the most money?’

“And that’s what a lot of people don’t realize when they worry about a fighter’s legacy. How’s he going to be remembered? These kids fight for money. They get hit in the head for what they do. It’s a sport but it’s also a business. But Oscar never turned down anybody. If you told him you could get $10 million with this guy and $12 million with that guy and $15 million with this guy, he’d say, ‘Sold. $15 million. Let’s do it.’ And that’s pretty much how Manny is too. That’s pretty much how all the great fighters are. But they still have managers; they still have advisers and, in the end, even though it’s about money, it is about winning, and even though it’s about winning, it’s about the money.”

In addition, Thomas Hauser’s recent column about HBO last week revealed that oftentimes, the television network can also use its financial influence to dictate the choice of opponent and take the proverbial bat off a matchmaker’s shoulders.

“When [HBO Vice President of Programming] Kery Davis says he’s not a matchmaker, he’s full of sh*t,” states Trampler, matter-of-factly. “I can tell you that from personal experience. It’s a nice cop-out answer.

“He’s put me in a position twice where we did fights that I was violently opposed to but I got shouted down in the end. He forced us to do [Almazbek] ‘Kid Diamond’ [Raimkulov] against Joel Casamayor, who is a left-hander. And he forced us to do Vanes Martirosyan against Joe Greene, who is also a left-hander. I never would’ve done those fights. It came down to who HBO wants. It’s the only one they’ll take. Well, that’s a form of being a matchmaker.”

 

Another thing I didn't know until I read the article is that Top Rank had Vargas and Finkel had Oscar back in the amateurs.