STEVE’S SOAPBOX
Gennadiy Golovkin sold so many tickets for his bout versus Marco Antonio Rubio in 2014 that extra bleacher seats were brought in. Now, the “War Grounds” (as dubbed by Bradley before his bout versus Jessie Vargas) is dormant. No fight cards were hosted there in 2025. The last one on the premises took place in August 2024 when Matchroom Boxing put on a card featuring Diego Pacheco. There don’t seem to be any shows that will be held there in the foreseeable future. Why? “The cost, the productions, have gone up,” explained Golden Boy Promotions president Eric Gomez. “It’s a union building now. I think back in the day, it wasn’t. So the cost has gone up. It’s just very, very expensive to have to build a lighting truss, a canopy – everything has gone up.” In the past, Golden Boy, which is located in Los Angeles, regularly utilized the Dignity Health Sports Park. But in recent years, their bigger local shows have taken place at the Honda Center in Anaheim or the Toyota Center in Ontario. Cost matters. And being outdoors only adds to it. “I’ll give you an example: The average for production when you do it in an arena is anywhere between $250,000 to $300,000,” Gomez continued. “You [go] outdoors in the Los Angeles area, it’s double [...] you’re going to end up spending $600,000 on production. There are so many elements that come into play. That’s been the problem: the production. It’s gone up.” And being an open-air facility brings about another variable – the weather. Who can forget that tempestuous night in March 2018 when Oscar Valdez and Scott Quigg battled as it poured rain all night. I dubbed that night “Waterworld,” and while it made for a memorable evening, it killed the live gate. “Weather is always a factor,” says Carl Moretti, the senior VP of boxing operations for Top Rank, which put on Valdez-Quigg. “You don’t want to go there with inclement weather, which takes out five or six months, at least. And it also has a reputation of no one
Vazquez-Marquez III at the Home Depot Center was unforgettable.
paying for tickets. You just go and it’s a free ticket-type of place.” (What Moretti is referring to are the “PBComps” distributed by Premier Boxing Champions for a number of years when the organization was basically giving away stacks of tickets for their cards. But that’s another story for another column.) The shame is that, regardless of the conditions, there was an atmosphere about the War Grounds. It was a place where true fight fans congregated. “There is something special about it, and I’ve gotta commend HBO and Showtime; they recognized that,” said Gomez. “They were a big part of it. And back in those days it was still a bit more expensive than an enclosed arena, but the networks decided to bite the bullet and they did it. And it was special. It was great. There were special nights. It was fun.” What’s more alarming is that beyond Dignity Health Sports Park, the boxing scene in Los Angeles is a bit, well ... dead. Think about the last time the Crypto.com Arena (formerly Staples Center) hosted a boxing event? Or The Forum, which actually had a bit of a revival with the sport about a decade ago. Just finding available buildings is difficult in this area, according to Gomez, who says, “There’s a lot to compete with. You’ve got to be very strategic. You have to do it months in advance. Look, there’s a new arena in L.A., the Intuit Dome (home of the NBA Clippers); we’ve been flirting with the idea of doing something
there. You have the YouTube Theater (within SoFi Stadium). There’s a couple of new places that we’ve been looking into. But doing a show in Los Angeles has gotten very expensive.” This problem isn’t exclusive to the West Coast. Aside from Katie Taylor- Amanda Serrano III in 2025 and Teofimo Lopez-Shakur Stevenson last January, there haven’t been many shows recently in the big room at Madison Square Garden, which years ago was known as “the Mecca of Boxing.” And they have the same issues as Crypto.com Arena. “Every building is booked with something in every major city,” said Moretti. “I don’t know if there’s an available Saturday in the upstairs room at [Madison Square Garden] till the end of the year. Once an NBA or NHL team has success, [arenas] have to be held for the league playoffs, and by the time the league releases the schedule, it’s too late to book the event.” It’s a bleak outlook. Is there any hope? “Sure, there’s hope,” said an optimistic Andy Foster, who cares about such things as the executive director of the California State Athletic Commission. “Look, California’s too big of a market. It’s just a bump in the road. There’s ebbs and flows, and right now we’re in an ebb. It’s just the way the market works.”
18 RINGMAGAZINE.COM
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