It seems that every single boxing promoter comes under real heat from the boxing community for ripping off fighters, being shady, etc. Have there ever been any promoters that earned the respect of the community at large?
Top Rank moves prospects better than anyone. Their guys make money and stay busy. As far as public opinion, that means nothing because the public very rarely has even the slightest clue.
That's good to know about Top Rank, you can't ask for more than that. The dealings I've had with better promoters have been mostly good, we had a fighter on a DiBella/Fifty Cent show and we were treated well. Everything was on schedule and they took care of everything. No complaints about them at all. In general, promoters are no worse than anybody else, they're just trying to make money. At the local level, there isn't much money and often times the "B" side makes a little money and the "A" side gets a win for their fighter. The promoter finds a venue, makes arrangements with the boxing commission, and then talks to managers. A manager with a prospect ("A" side) is offered an opponent ("B" side) and is told how much he'll need to pay for the opponent's purse and expenses including medicals (if the opponent is not current). In exchange the manager will be given an allotment of tickets to sell. After he sells a certain amount, he and his fighter will get a percentage of the rest of the tickets. If the fighter is popular, he can make money, if not, he'll get a fight on his record. We have a few "B side" pros who stop by the gym to get a little sparring before a fight if they know about the fight in time. Usually, they find out about the fight late and are only concerned about making whatever the weight is in a few days. The ones who stop by our gym can fight some, but they are in their 30s, have jobs and families and don't train much. They'll get offered a fight for the following Saturday on Tuesday before the fight. If the money is good they'll take it. They'll need to weigh in on Friday, so they might stop by on Wednesday to spar a little and to use the scale. After that they are busy getting ready to drive/fly on Thursday. What you see from a fighter can be very different from fight to fight. These guys are "survivors" most of the time, but if they have time to train for a fight they can surprise. One of them beat a fighter with a good record in the northeast recently and another time fought as the "B" side in California and upset his opponent there. A manager has to do more research on the opponent than just check BoxRec, he has to be able to figure out if the opponent is a "no hoper" or if the opponent is just unmotivated. The unmotivated can get motivated sometimes. I'm sure the promoter got the blame when the manager's of those two fighters who lost got beaten. They probably thought the promoter set them up, but all he did was find an opponent. In general promoters are just trying to make money, since they are running the show they get the blame when somebody is unhappy.
I have known a lot of promoters personally and can tell you their self-service permeates through them - barring one. The late Don Chargin was a good guy and you'd have to struggle to find fighters, journalists or managers who had a bad word to say about Don.
Top post, my friend. I know a guy who is 13-10, I think, and he makes good money. He is always in shape, takes fights on short notice, goes the distance and makes the undefeated guy work. He has fought Robert Easter and he would have beat Andy Vences if he didn't quit using his jab. A guy like that, he is very valuable and can make some money. I am familiar with a bunch of guys that fight for Golden Boy and are happy, busy, and making money. I know one guy that basically flushed his career down the toilet by leaving Golden Boy for PBC. But, you know, Oscar built that business by stealing all of Ricardo Maldonado's fighters and a few years later they both sued PBC.
Good insight into how it works at the lower levels. Some years ago I used to work with fighters and my brother would promote club shows. Ours were all pretty much B-side types (opponents as they were known) but a few were very competitive on the regional level and made some decent money stepping up (with the occasional upset win). Generally the guys we would bring in to fight our guys were within driving distance and were willing to fight for reasonable money (instead of going far ‘on the road’ to take on an A-side with a 17-0 record like usual, where they wanted to get paid a lot more, a 6-7 guy might come to our show and fight one of our guys who was 6-3 where he had a real chance to win). Mostly our guys (this is 1990s) made like $100 per scheduled round (we did mostly 4s and 6s) and could make more by selling tickets. We would do 3-4 shows a year and sell general admission for like $10-15 and ringside like this — one side would have 4-5 rows priced from like $25-$50 per seat depending on row, and the others we sold tables of 8-10 seats for like $500 and $400. Some were groups of buddies and some were local businesses who would entertain clients or bring employees of the month and such as a treat (tables also got waitress service for concessions). Then we’d make a good bit off concessions and T-shirts. Sometimes we made a few thousand on a big show (usually the last one of the year) and sometimes we’d lose a few hundred. Mostly we pretty much broke even, but it kept the fighters busy and helped them get wins so they could get decent paydays on the road (an 8-2 or 11-5 guy on a 4-fight win streak might get to go overseas or to Vegas or NYC or LA to face a prospect or contender and pick up a good low five figures). Our best two jobs in ‘rehabilitating’ careers were a 1-6 guy (5 KO losses all in the first 2 rounds) who ended up about 18-11 and another career opponent was 1-35-1 and finished 15-54-2 ... he was part of a ‘meat wagon’ situation and we liked him so we put him in with 1-1 guys and things like that and he would win one and lose one, win another and lose two, usually taking a minor payday on the road after every win. He still comes down to the one or two shows a year my brother puts on to help in corners and such. I get sick of people who have no idea what they’re talking about saying all promoters rip off fighters. Sure, Don King and some others have infamously done so.
You'd be surprised to find out what a four round fight can pay now, I know I was. Like you I remember the $100 per round that was routine for a long time. Now, four round fights can pay $2-3,000 and more. Of course the whole show is more expensive now, there is the Federal ID, and all of the medicals, eye exams, some states require EKGs and MRIs. We have an undefeated pro and were offered $2,500 recently for a four rounder (that was from a broker so it was probably $3-3,500 before the broker got involved). We did a little research, found that the guy we were offered had over 300 amateur fights in Eastern Europe, and was bigger than our fighter so we turned it down but we have another slightly bigger fighter that might be ready for him soon...? I like the way you and your brother were doing shows. Matching evenly, where either fighter could win. The way things are most places you are either the hunter, or the hunted, depending on whether you are paying your opponent or getting paid by an opponent. Sounds like you and your brother did good things for the local fighters.
That is something many people don't understand. Many times the opponent makes more than the prospect, especially if he is a guy that goes rounds and gives good work. The guy I mentioned earlier was doing 10 grand for 8 rounds, paying 2 to the guy that was finding him fights. I know another guy that held out for 6 grand for a 4 in Puerto Rico against an undefeated guy. He didn't get it but the promoter paid five.
I remember he promoted Bobby Chacon v. Boza-Edwards II. It became a non-title fight because The WBC sided with Don King, who had options on Chacon. Seems fair until you consider Boza was the #1 Contender. King wanted Chacon to fight Hector Camacho and the WBC agreed, ignoring that it seemed preposterous that you wouldn't sanction the Champion v. the number 1 contender. Anyway, Chargin put on Boza v. Chacon and the fans were treated to a classic that transcended whether or not it was for an alphabet title. Without Chargin, that fight doesn't happen. Thanks Mr. Chargin.
He was hugely respected. I can blame him personally for this half century of obsession because I grew up watching his fights. A few years ago I thought I was going to be on HBO as part of a series focusing on two former fighters that were recovering from alcoholism. They were both childhood heroes of mine, a fighter I trained was going to LA, it was a dream. But the guy I was associated with was suddenly aced out (the whole project was ultimately scrapped) and I didn't know why. Turns out he had a contractual conflict and the guy he was trying to short was Don Chargin.
Yes, I’m aware that costs have skyrocketed. In our neck of the woods it was mainly driven by casinos who changed the going rate. Word got around to managers and fighters pretty quickly about what we had going on — ‘opponents vs. opponents’ so we got good rates from guys who knew they could get a fair fight (as in not overmatched) and we always tried to book a month or so ahead (of course we’d have to replace fighters who dropped out) so they had time to train because they new it could be that rare win and they’d bust their butts to be ready. My favorite one we made was a 5-45 guy who drove about 8 hours to face a local-ish 17-60 guy — all the ‘visitor’ wanted was $100 a round, 2 nights hotel and gas money (another thing we did was take all the fighters out to eat at a buffet after the weigh-in rather than hand out meal money, which was always a fun time). They went to WAR for 4 rounds and were mirror images. Both had great chins and were known for usually going the distance with anyone below future-champ level so they just stayed in the pocket and banged for 3 minutes a round. Got a big ovation at the end and you could tell it meant a lot to them to be appreciated.
