There is a familiar pattern that occurs on most major televised boxing cards nowadays. A putrid undercard that takes place in front of a sparse gathering is then followed by what seems to be an interminable wait (of at least 45 minutes) as the ring is cleared off while the broadcast crew goes through their final rehearsals for that night’s telecast.
Throughout the arena there is a malaise of apathy and disinterest that spreads like the plague. Fans just mill around with nothing to do and now most boxing audiences arrive just minutes before the main event.
You can’t blame them, you see livelier atmospheres at mausoleums.
Todd duBoef, president of Top Rank Inc., which is promoting this Saturday night’s ‘Blaze of Glory’ show from the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, had a bit of an epiphany this past February while attending the NBA All-Star game festivities that took place in Las Vegas.
“It was amazing, I had no idea the type of production the NBA put on,” duBoef would tell Maxboxing. “It blew me away with that Jam Fest and there was so much interactive stuff and it was unbelievable. My son, he’s six years old, he had never really seen a basketball game and halfway through it, he was a Kobe Bryant fan, He had the ‘East’ jersey, he’s bouncing the ball in the house at 11 o’clock at night. It was so great and refreshing to see that and how it just totally consumed him and he was enamored by it. I think they just do an unbelievable job in the whole production.”
On that particular Saturday night, the NBA would hold it’s skills contest, slam dunk contest, 3-pt contest and even had a match race between referee Dick Bavetta and Charles Barkley. And it was all wrapped around a high-tech, modern production that kept the fans at the Thomas and Mack Center – and those watching on television – entertained throughout the proceedings.
“What it teaches all of us – and especially for April 14th, like we did last year in New York – is that we’re going to try to make these events more than just a boxing match that is just shown on television,” said duBoef. “I want to educate the fans more, we want the people that are going to be there to have a different experience. And I think that is a really, really big part of it.”
Like last year’s show from Madison Square Garden featuring Miguel Cotto, neither HBO or Showtime is involved in producing or distributing the telecast, which puts Top Rank at more financial risk, but it does provide for certain liberties.
“The thing I like about distributing it ourselves is that we have a different philosophy,” explains Top Rank’s head honcho, Bob Arum. “Our philosophy is you gotta entertain the fans. What do fans want to see? They’re paying money to see boxing. They’re paying a lot of money to see good boxing and they want to be entertained. What does that mean?
“It means more, rather than less fights. In other words, it’s wonderful to have three fights if you’re going to block out time for Larry Merchant and Jim Lampley to pontificate. But the fans really don’t want to see that, they don’t want to hear that. On our shows, one fight immediately follows the other. We’re going to have four fights on the shows – lots and lots of music. On HBO or even Showtime to be fair, when the announcers are pontificating, nobody is allowed to play any music, nothing is allowed to happen.
“Contrast that to other sports. Can you imagine a Notre Dame football game and telling the Irish marching band to be quiet because the announcers are talking? I mean, boxing is killing itself.”
Announcers discussing or dissecting an upcoming bout or a network showing a vignette on a particular fighter are a necessary part of the broadcast and oftentimes very informative and insightful. However, the problem is that while the viewing experience of the television audience is enhanced, it is done so at the expense of those inside the arena who bought tickets.
With this freedom to produce and direct their own show, Top Rank is going all-out in dressing up their show, which features Manny Pacquiao and Jorge Arce.
“We’re going to do videos of each fighter as they walk in before the fights, so they’ll be a one-minute lead up to tell you about the match, whatever that is. We’re producing a video that will be shown on the big screens so everybody will be into that,” explains duBoef. “We’re going to try to create really good energy, do some pyro, do some lights.”
In addition to doing some flamboyant ring entrances for the fighters.
“Arce you know is going to have a great entrance,” says duBoef. In his last outing at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California, Arce would enter the ring being carried out on a horse. “You never know what he’s going to come up with.”
In addition to that, the plan calls for all the post-fight interviews to be piped into the arena so that the live audience can hear them.
In other words, they are going to ‘UFC’ their show. Bottom line, while boxing has gotten complacent and stale, that realm has created an atmosphere that keeps fans coming through the turnstiles. The typical MMA card has fans that arrive for the first bell and stay all night.
“I don’t know,” said duBoef, hemming and hawing a bit, when asked if the UFC has raised the bar. “I wouldn’t say so. UFC is a different product; it’s a totally different product. UFC had a lot more production than they do today. They cut back on their production. PRIDE actually did a lot more production. Wrestling does a ton of production. I don’t see that they’ve raised the stakes and that’s why we’re doing it. I just think it’s something that we’ve gotten all used to, whoever was creating the domestic freight and paying the domestic dollars, having them call the shots.
“And sometimes you gotta take the content back over yourself and try to say, ‘Hey, how can we create the excitement again?'”
But when you ask Arum if the UFC has done a better job of showcasing their product, he explodes.
“ARE YOU KIDDING!?!?! I mean the presentation of boxing is terrible!!! Going to a boxing show is the most boring thing in the world. Sitting there for a half-hour or more between fights, nothing to do, no music. I mean, it’s horrible. It’s not a good experience and that’s why some old people will come because they want to see fights. But younger people don’t want to go anymore.”
Boxing, circa 2007, has bored a demographic that is near and dear to Arum’s heart – his wife Lovey.
“She says it’s terrible,” he says. “And all her friends say it’s terrible. We used to have fights and they used to clamor and call us to go for tickets. Now, they don’t even want free tickets.”
In an era where more and more promoters are nothing more than television packagers and booking agents, the control of the product has been ceded from the promoters to the network entities that foot the bill for the game’s biggest promotions. The reality is most of the other promoters today (at least in America) wouldn’t be willing to spend the $50,000 or so that Top Rank is spending for their bells and whistles.
“That kind of creativity is not being done by the entrepreneurs and promotional aspects that used to be done years ago,” duBoef says. “What the creativity is now is, ‘Oh, you want a fight? Here’s an ‘After Dark’ date or here’s a network date on this Saturday night. Oh, I don’t want you to go in this location, why don’t you go in this location?’ And we’re beholden to these guys and to the networks to do everything. They’re great allies when you have a great product but on the other hand they’re into showing it to their audience on television. That is their key, if you can get those people who are subscribers to watch it.”
But what’s being lost is creating a new generation of fans that are being built from the grassroots level, the ones that go to the actual events and will continue to support the business in the upcoming years.
“I think it’s important to go beyond that. There may be 33 million homes in the HBO universe and 14 million in the Showtime universe but you want to know what? There are a lot of people that are spending a lot more money to buy a ticket at three, four, five hundred dollars – or in some cases 2,000 dollars – you owe them more than just a dead ring, a silent ring with a lot of down time and talking heads.”
Rick Seara, Top Rank’s producer/director of Media Production, is in charge of executing Arum and duBoef’s vision. Usually, Seara just handles Top Rank’s international broadcast, but this time around, his responsibilities have been greatly expanded.
“It’s a little more detailed,” he admitted to Maxboxing. “We are going to try to do things a little different. We want to make it fun for people in the arena and on television. Not saying the fights themselves aren’t fun but what we want to do is set up that excitement. Let people know that there’s an event going on. This is different because there’s a lot more detail. I mean a lot of different effects that we’re going to try to do and we want to enhance the fan’s experience.”
Seara, who arrived in town on Tuesday, is dealing with more logistical issues than ever as he tries to coordinate the new features to fit the televised production.
“It’s a lot more work because you’ve got to deal with lighting and lighting has to deal with the people they hire to do the effects and then you have to deal with the venue, let the venue know what’s going on,” Seara explains. “You’ve got to call the fire marshal so he knows what’s going on. I don’t have to get the permits but the company that we hire has to get them and everything else. Every step of the way, Todd and Bob are being appraised of what’s going on because this is an extra added cost issue. This is a cost they didn’t have to absorb in the past.”
With the added dimensions, producing this event becomes a bit more strenuous.
“I think for me personally, this is a great challenge to do,” says Seara, who had kept in touch constantly with the Alamodome and the hired hands for several weeks in coordinating this show. “There’s a lot of guys in this business I look up to, who do a great job. And I try to emulate and do as good a job as they do. And I’ve talked to a couple of them, I talked to one in particular who’s given me some good advice. And I take it to heart. I think this is a great challenge for us as a company, and listen, we’re not breaking any new ground, we’re not finding a cure for cancer. We’re still putting on an event. We’re putting on a sport – it’s still boxing.
“We’re not changing how the cameras are going to be shot, we’re not going to do any of that. That’s been done for 25, 30 years and it’s done right. What we want to do is just add that entertainment value.”
Seara is correct in stating that the wheel is not being re-invented here, as Europe has been far ahead of the curve of their American counterparts in dressing up their shows.
“I’ve seen some of the Klitschko stuff and it’s really a production,” says an admiring Seara. “You’re watching a show. The last Klitschko fight you got a guy with a hammer and sickle, hitting the hammer and things like that. We’re not going to get that far but what we want to do is make it an event. We want to make the crowd in the arena as much a part of the show as possible.”
duBoef agrees, saying, “I give a lot of credit, when you go to Europe, the Germans with the Klitschkos have wonderful entrances with lights and lasers. The English did it with Hamed, he had great entrances with lights and lasers and things like that. I think that kind of stuff adds to the showbiz element.”
While a dress rehearsal for all the added elements will be supervised by Seara on Friday night at the arena, throughout the week leading up to the show, Top Rank is putting on a series of promotional events that will be open to the public.
“Everybody will have public workouts,” says Arum, perhaps the last true carnival barker left in the business. “Thursday we have a satellite tour, it goes all over the country. Friday is the weigh-in and Saturday is the fight. So everyday we’re going to flood everything.”
The pay-per-view numbers for this show figure to be modest. But the biggest impact this telecast can have is to set a template for others to emulate – including the networks. Top Rank’s next pay-per-view show is on June 9th, featuring Miguel Cotto’s showdown against Zab Judah at Madison Square Garden.
“Let me tell you something, June 9th, I’m not just going to sit on the sideline, this is not a one-shot wonder, I’m telling you that,” insisted duBoef. “We are going to have fun. Listen, if people don’t understand this, you put a little back into this, you do some fun, you do some education to the fans and you give them a great experience.”
Last year’s show at the Garden with Cotto had some of the basic, elementary elements that are being implemented for this weekend.
“We’ve got to keep it going,” continued duBoef, Arum’s heir apparent at Top Rank. “And you’ve got to stop being lazy. Too many people sit back and care about, ‘Oh, I got guaranteed this much money, what else do I have to do? Why work, why do anything else?’
“There are no barriers of entry to be a boxing promoter and therefore we’ve created this state of complacency.”
Arum says he’ll try and control that June broadcast, “To the extent I can. Because they have control over the production. But there sure as hell are going to do four fights. If they don’t like it, they can take a walk.”
He then goes George Bush (not Dubya, but the father): We’re doing four fights. READ MY LIPS: This is a Saturday night and if the last fight goes on after 12 o’clock, who cares? It’s 9 o’clock on the west coast. Hey, heeeelllooo, heeeellloooo, there’s people that live out here also. So we’re going to do four fights. We’re going to do music as much as we can and we’re going to move the fights as much as we can and we’re going to go back to doing sensational entrances.”
Arum firmly believes that boxing has a superior product to MMA, but that their presentation of it is far inferior. He uses the analogy of how the forms of communication we use have evolved from the telephone, to the fax machine, to pagers to now cell phones and blackberries that can do everything from receiving emails to downloading music and television programs. To him, the way boxing is broadcast and presented is akin to the rotary phone.
“I look at my competition now as not being HBO, not being Showtime, not being Golden Boy or anybody,” says the still pugnacious Arum. “My competition is UFC and MMA and I’m going to demonstrate that we can do it better than they can.”
