FLOAT LIKE A BEE THE COMEBACK KID
The Ring: What is your ultimate goal and vision for Inside The Ring ? Max Kellerman: To be a part of a great show that entertains and informs boxing fans and maybe gets some casual fans more interested in the sport. The Ring: Moving forward, how involved will you be with ringside commentating? Was Canelo-Crawford a one-off? MK: Can’t get too into the details at the moment, but I plan to be back ringside going forward.
it. And then Nick Khan was involved. Nick has been a good friend for 20- plus years, and he is a brilliant guy. Just look at what he’s done with the WWE. So it was the moment I was waiting for in boxing. That was the call I had been looking forward to for years. The Ring: You are a future Hall of Famer who gives boxing relevance to the mainstream sports fan. Do you see yourself in that role of carrying the torch?
how to grow it and get it back to the mainstream. The people behind what’s happening now are an A-team who sought each other out and have created this momentum toward a new day in boxing. I’m very happy to be a part of it. The Ring: What do these guys bring? MK: They want good fights. It’s that simple. Let’s look at the Terence Crawford-Canelo Alvarez fight. Think about the undercard; they were all 50- 50 fights. The B-side did just as well
that night as the A-side. There was a draw in the Christian Mbilli-Lester Martinez fight, right? Mbilli came in as the favorite, and it ended in a draw. Jermaine Franklin, B-side, got a decision over Ivan Dychko. Crawford’s guy, Steven Nelson, was upset by B-side Raiko Santana, which I thought was a premature stoppage, and in the main event, B-side Terence Crawford beat Canelo Alvarez. That was a great card. There you saw Zuffa Boxing holding a card in conjunction with Riyadh Season, and it was an extravaganza at a stadium. When was the last time you heard this: They got a college football game moved off that September 13 date and moved to Week 0 so they could have Allegiant Stadium on a Saturday night? You had the kind of memorabilia being sold there that you would normally see at an NFL game. When you think about
The Ring : What attracted you to Inside The Ring ? MK: I was intrigued because it is unlike any boxing show before, sort of like an Inside the NBA for boxing. I had been away from TV for two years and I was waiting for the right kind of show to come back with. The first call I got that I thought “yeah, I want to do this” was from Dana White. Dana told me he was finally getting into boxing, and he wanted me to be his guy. Now, Dana and I have been talking for over 20 years, because he originally wanted me on the UFC broadcasts when Zuffa bought it [in 2001]. I was interested, because I was into the UFC, but I was at ESPN at the time, and back then, especially, ESPN would not relax exclusivity in their contracts. But Dana and I spoke for years about doing something. Anyway, when HBO went off the air, that level of production
I was intrigued because it is unlike any boxing show before, sort of like an Inside the NBA for boxing. I had been away from TV for two years and I was waiting for the right kind of show to come back with.
Netflix provided wall-to-wall coverage for Canelo vs. Crawford.
boxing. That actual institution-building know-how is entering boxing now and trying to create the same thing that MMA now has in the form of the UFC — something that grows and lasts. The Ring: Was it frustrating the two years you were away from TV? MK: My big question was how long would I have to wait for the right opportunity. Something that would be exciting to be involved with. The Ring: Were you afraid you wouldn’t get the chance to do boxing commentary again? MK: I was depressed that boxing in this country was disintegrating. In every generation, they lament the
When the lucrative deals come in boxing, instead of investing the money back into the sport, promoters pocket the money and think the deal that they are getting is the cash-out. They think, “Now we’re in the money, and now we can underdeliver because we’ve made it.” No! Dana White never thinks that way. He puts the money right back into the product. For example, look at what happened during COVID-19. Combat sports had a golden opportunity. For football, you would need hundreds of tests to stage an event. In combat sports, you didn’t. There are far fewer participants. What does Dana do? He immediately created Fight Island and starts staging events. Boxing had a chance to stage events.
slow death of boxing. In this case, though, it hit a critical state. It was completely off linear TV. The average sports fan does not know anything about boxing anymore. Nothing. Zuffa bought the UFC for $2 million in 2001. Dana talked about it recently when he was featured on 60 Minutes . They recently signed a $7.7 billion deal with Paramount. When you start talking about numbers like that, you’re talking about league numbers. That’s NFL, NBA, MLB – huge league numbers. There is no deal like that in boxing.
MK: I appreciate the kind words. I am part of a team led by Turki, Dana and Nick. What I notice when I’m in a room with any permutation of them is everyone knows boxing and, more importantly, loves it. Unlike different iterations of power brokers in the sport through the years, these guys actually love it and want to make it better. Behind closed doors, they talk about many of the same subjects boxing fans have geeked out about for years, mostly
in boxing was not replaced. It was just gone. And I really didn’t want to do anything in boxing that didn’t have those standards. When I heard Dana was going to be involved, I knew the quality of the event and of the broadcast would be extraordinary. And then the fact that Turki Alalshikh was involved, and I’d been watching him from afar the past several years, and had been really impressed by his genuine passion for boxing, and by his commitment to
boxing, it is very much a mom-and- pop operation. Even the big boxing operators, they have a little suite of offices. When they go out of business, the office suite is gone. They put everything in one van and that’s that. (laughs) If you go to the UFC headquarters, it’s a multimillion dollar campus. It looks like a giant, sprawling airplane hangar. They have gates and security guards, and dozens of employees bustling around. That’s never existed in
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