Two days after Thanksgiving, a fight card takes place at the brand new Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario, California that features the heavyweight battle between Chris Arreola and Travis Walker and the junior middleweight title bout between Verno Phillips and Paul Williams. This event is promoted by Goossen-Tutor, which has the services of Arreola and Williams.
And based on the current economic climate, and with it being the holiday season, they are taking a bit of a gamble. Unlike most big boxing events nowadays, they are not doing it under the safe cocoon of a casino venue. The bottom line is, they have to put fannies in those seats.
“First off, I don’t care if I go to a 1,500 seat arena or a 15,000 seat arena – it’s all promoting,” said Dan Goossen, who is working endlessly to push his fight card. “I gotta go out there and promote, whether I’m selling seats, whether I’m selling a fighter, trying to get their profile up higher or whether I’m trying to get a higher rating. So I don’t care what level it’s done at. You gotta go out there and promote, and it’s a challenge.
“Forget the economy, forget the holidays; you got a lot of competition out there and you gotta bring the fans something that you can sell and you can look them straight in the eye and say, ‘You’re going to love being there. You’re going to love this entertainment.'”
Of his agreement with the venue, Goossen states, “I’ve got a deal with AEG and Citizens Business Bank Arena where if I’m going to make any money, I gotta sell tickets.”
This card was placed here in large part to start building the local fan base of Arreola, who hails from nearby Riverside. Cultivating and harnessing local attractions is a lost art for the most part these days.
“I think the problem is you got some promoters that certainly haven’t discovered the art of promoting. You’ve got some fighters that have undertaken promoting that haven’t discovered the art of promoting,” said Goossen, who years ago built the lucrative careers of Gabe and Rafael Ruelas and Michael Nunn, with the Reseda Country Club as their foundation. “Then you obviously have some of the old crew that not only know how to promote but have been some of the greatest promoters in the history of the sport. So it’s not necessarily a lost art, it’s just a seldom used art.”
Goossen believes that regardless of where a fight lands, it must be promoted. “If I’m doing a fight at the MGM Grand, I’m still going out there trying to sell tickets because unless it’s a Super Fight, the MGM Grand can only get a limited amount of their customers there,” he points out. “You gotta still bring in the general public. So whether it was a free standing building or casino, the goal should be to fill up every seat you can. And having it in someone?s hometown or at a casino, it’s always nice to do these free-standing buildings, but a lot of the fans like to go to the casinos, where you’ve got a lot more entertainment value for your dollar.”
But if you’ve opened up the newspaper recently (I know some of you still read the newspaper), you?ll see that less and less people are heading to the casino resorts. Times are tough, no doubt, but Goossen believes that using the current economic plight as a reason for failed promotions is an overused crutch.
“It’s legitimate,” Goossen says, “but it’s a good excuse if you come up short. Every time I try to come up with some type of excuse on anything I ever do, as it relates to attendance, I turn on the TV and see sell-out football games, sell-out basketball games, sell-out baseball games. So those are only excuses – and even if they were accurate, it still doesn’t do any good to rest your laurels on them.”
Perhaps it’s a leap of faith, but Goossen believes he’ll draw 10,000 fans on Saturday night. He feels strongly that he’s priced the tickets affordably, with ringside seats going for $200 and seats that can be had for as low as $25.
“The problem too many people make is that they price the tickets looking to get their home run in revenues. And the problem is that just because it adds up to seven-figures doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to sell them. So the first order of business is to realize what the market is, where you are, what you’re asking the fans to put their hard-earned money out for and then you’ll be able to determine what that price base should be,” opines the veteran promoter. “In this one, we could’ve easily gone to $300, but we all just felt that we had plenty of seats, in whole different categories and if we get 200 instead of 300, we’re happy. And it’s working out well that way.”
Goossen-Tutor has planned a series of events this week (such as open workouts for the participants) to draw attention to their show, and they are eschewing the traditional final press conference, as it conflicts with Thanksgiving. The marketing of this fight has focused in on the Inland Empire area. They have also purchased radio spots with local stations and have bought ads in the Los Angeles Times (which are, interestingly enough, not always in the Sports section.)
“We’ve spent a little bit more than I like to spend,” admitted Goossen, “but I just felt it was worth it because we got such a great event that night.”
LATE SUGAR RUSH?
Multiple sources have informed Maxboxing.com that negotiations between the camps of Shane Mosley and Andre Berto reached an impasse over the weekend and a deal for them to face each other on January 24th was never agreed to.
Berto, the current WBC welterweight titlist, was the fall back plan for Golden Boy Promotions and HBO after Antonio Margarito originally passed on the fight. There were several issues that loomed large. Berto and his camp, led by promoter Lou DiBella and adviser Al Haymon, were looking for a million dollar payday for their fighter. And when they couldn’t secure it, they decided it wasn’t worth dropping their belt (as Luis Collazo is their mandatory challenger) to face Mosley at this point. Also, there was the insistence on Mosley and his side of having the fight take place in Las Vegas. Another important factor is that the disparity in money for Berto in facing Collazo, as opposed to Mosley, isn’t all that great. And finally, Berto’s braintrust, seeing what took place with Bernard Hopkins and Kelly Pavlik, had some reservations in throwing a young fighter in with a seasoned veteran.
As that fight unraveled, talks resumed for Margarito to face Mosley over the weekend. From what I’m told, there was plenty of progress made and there is a very strong possibility that this fight could be finalized shortly, with a press conference being planned for the weekend of Pacquiao-De La Hoya.
The fight would be scheduled for January 24th and most likely take place at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
BLIND DATES
While this whole mess was going on to find an opponent for Mosley, many within the industry were wondering just why HBO had designated this slot (January 24th) as a Mosley date. Considering that he’s never done particularly well from a ratings perspective and had struggled to beat Ricardo Mayorga in late September, why wasn’t Mosley just an option to appear on this weekend, instead of being entrenched like he was?
Shouldn’t networks be in the business of buying fights, not fighters? I guess some things never change.
Also, considering that Margarito had just appeared on a highly successful pay-per-view event and had recently participated in a very successful event with Paul Williams at the very same Home Depot Center that had a sparse crowd for Mosley-Mayorga, why was the division of revenue at 50-50?
I guess ‘partnerships’ have their privileges.
HATTON
Is it just me, or is Ricky Hatton tough to watch? Honestly, you have to respect the effort he gives out there, but his fights just aren’t that pleasing to the eye or all that entertaining. There’s an overabundance of grappling and mauling, and not enough clean punching and combinations.
If fouls were given for clinching (as they should be, but aren’t unfortunately) you wonder just how effective a fighter he would be.
As for Paulie Malignaggi, the most amazing feat he accomplished as far as I’m concerned was getting a million dollar payday out of this. Which is amazing, considering there aren’t a lot of options out there for him and he’s not even really much of a ticket seller in New York, much less Las Vegas.
THE PRETENDER
Does anyone provide more cannon fodder for the sport of boxing than Jeff Wald and ‘The Tournament of Contenders’? Brian Vera is just the latest guy to be farmed out as a B-side opponent on a televised show, and then summarily beaten and battered.
Like Steve Forbes, Alfonso Gomez, Peter Manfredo Jr and Sergio Mora before him, Instead of being actually promoted and built (which of course takes money, know-how, patience and time) after his big win over Andy Lee earlier this year, he was then just thrown to the wolves (in this case the hard-charging James Kirkland) for a quick, easy payday by a company that doesn’t understand that there is more to promoting than just putting your fighter on a card and then sitting at your seat ringside with your credential hanging around your neck.
It would be one thing if these ‘Contenders’ were favored to win some of these high-profile fights or received staggering paydays. But the fact is that most of the time they are prohibitive underdogs and they usually don’t break the bank. And even when they do pull off an upset, like Mora and Vera have recently, they are invariably brought back into fights in which they have very little chance of winning, instead of being put back into situations where they are the attractions and can build on their momentum and market value.
They are just brokered out like pieces of meat.
Wald is Jimmy Montoya 2.0.
FINAL FLURRIES
There was a very good card this past Friday night at the Quiet Cannon in Montebello which was highlighted by Manny Roman (who improved to 14-0-1) getting off the canvas to outwork Jose Luis Cardenas over eight rounds….OK, Sam Bradford of Oklahoma is my newest Heisman Trophy frontrunner….U.S. Olympian Shawn Estrada and good looking welterweight prospect Mike Dallas are scheduled to appear on the show in Ontario on Saturday night….. Can Paul Johnson of Georgia Tech coach or what? I don’t think the Hurricanes have tackled anyone yet…..The New York football Giants look like the best team in the NFL….Good to see TO get back on track. Finally, a reason to get yo’ popcorn ready….Let’s hope this fight does well on Saturday night at the CBBA; hey, a night at the fights is always fun. Besides, it beats seeing USC’s annual shellacking of Notre Dame….Funny how Notre Dame fans were pelting their own team with snowballs against the Cuse. Were they more accurate than Jimmy Claussen?…..And finally, this from Mediatakeout.com (one of my favorite sites) – they are reporting that MC Breed has passed away. I guess there really is no future in your frontin’. Long, live MC Breed…..
