New York— Lou DiBella is sitting at a table in Vezzo, a pizzeria in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan, enjoying a large thin-crust cheese pie and a glass of pinot noir when he is approached by
two men who recognize the promoter. DiBella cuts an imposing image with his shaved head and large frame, but there is something about him, a no-bullshit, intrinsically New York charm, that makes him easily approachable.
“Tough loss this weekend Lou,” says one, a svelte man with slicked back hair wearing a Yankees pullover.
DiBella is four days removed from watching his fighter Andre Berto lose by unanimous decision against ‘Vicious’ Victor Ortiz. Going into the fight Berto was undefeated and the W.B.C. welterweight champion. Berto’s loss meant the prospect of bigger fights and paydays were gone in the immediate future.
DiBella, concentrating more on the pizza and looking unconcerned responds in kind.
“Ah, it is what it is,” DiBella replies shaking a slice in the man’s direction. “Good pizza here.”
The inquisitive fan doesn’t bite on the pizza line. He is more concerned about what else is on DiBella’s plate.
“What do you think will happen to him [Berto]?” he inquires.
“I don’t know,” DiBella says somewhat dismissively. “Fight someone else and then a fight a rematch later.”
“You really see the other guy [Ortiz] giving a rematch?, he asks.
“It will happen,” Dibella answers, a polite smile creasing his face. “The money will be there.”
For a fight that was reportedly HBO’s most viewed fight of 2011 thus far and with early murmurs of fight of the year DiBella knows that the fight was good for boxing. More importantly, DiBella knows that although Berto lost the fight, the belt and his undefeated record, more fights will come for the young welterweight because he showed he could be involved in an entertaining bout.
“People want to see fights, real fights. That’s why Ortiz and Berto did so well with the fans and the ratings,” DiBella says shortly after the two men leave. “That should be more of the norm.”
DiBella is certainly unhappy with the Berto loss, but not as unhappy as his outlook on the
prizefighting business as a whole.
“Make fights.”
As DiBella eats his lunch, he repeats this mantra over and again.
For DiBella boxing is not about who has the best record or most skills or even who is in the pound-for-pound reckoning.
“Make fights,” DiBella repeats. “People care about fights.”
DiBella lays forth imaginary groundwork of a middleweight round-robin tournament with rising stars and journeymen such as Peter Manfredo, Andy Lee, Nobuhiro Ishida, Brian Vera and Marco Antonio Rubio.
For DiBella the business strategy of such a tournament touches on why mixed martial arts is succeeding where boxing is failing.
“They sell whatever they put out in mixed martial arts. It’s not all about the names. A guy can lose and come back in a month or two.”
As HBO Boxing’s senior executive for 11 years DiBella created the popular series Boxing After Dark. It was a show that exemplified DiBella’s vision of boxing as entertainment. Boxing After Dark was propelled by fighters like Angel Manfredy, Arturo Gatti, Ivan Robinson and Mickey Ward, who fought with imperfect records and limited skills but produced unpredictable excitement and results.
“It’s about styles of fights, it’s about what people want to see,” DiBella says. “If it’s not good television, it’s not entertainment and it’s not going to succeed.”
As an example DiBella takes the fight of lesser known Andy Lee against Craig McKewan on the undercards of one of his recent fights and compares it to the big name disappointment of Devon Alexander-Timothy Bradley, two supposed superstars of the sport who failed to live up to their billing.
“People would rather see McKewan duke it out with Andy Lee and Andy pull out that stunning kind of victory after a war than watch some guy [Alexander] who is force fed to you because people say he is
good. No one cares about a lot of the fighters out there that have skill. With all due respect Devon Alexander hasn’t really made himself a fan favorite and there are a load of other guys like him.”
DiBella believes that hinging the total package of every show on the main event is one of the sports main problems, that the card should provide good fights from the time the doors open.
“I could make the McKewan-Andy Lee fight all the time. I could make it every show. That’s the kind of fight as a promoter I want to be allowed to make for an HBO or Showtime.”
As DiBella finishes his meal, his conversation starts to wind down as well.
“I don’t think boxing is going to die. I think it is eternal as a sport,” Dibella says wistfully. “I think boxing is unquestionably a better product than mixed martial arts, but it doesn’t matter. If you don’t present your product right, then you have problems.”
As DiBella gets up to leave he adds one more log to the fire.
“If there is no young fan-base again, we are just going to marginalize more and more and then we are simply a niche sport. I don’t want to see boxing become roller derby and frankly that’s where it’s heading.”
DiBella shares a departing farewell as he answers his cell phone and walks out the door, back into the heavy afternoon foot traffic of Lexington Avenue, promoting the future of boxing.
