THE COMEBACK KID
MK: It is like the culmination of a dream from those days. I mean, I have receipts I’ve posted on social media showing how long I’ve been talking about The Ring. It’s over 23 years now. I was talking about The Ring ratings and the Ring champions – and refusing to mention the sanctioning bodies – long before I was paid by The Ring. Literally decades before. Check my Twitter. The Ring brand has of course now been bought by a deep-pocketed boxing fan who wants to revitalize the sport and use the Ring brand to help do it. So it’s like a dream come true for me just as a boxing fan. And boxing fans are going to get commentary every week, something that has not been around since Friday Night Fights . The Ring: Do you and Mike have free rein to cover controversial subjects in the boxing world? MK: Of course. I have been specifically told by Turki that if I don’t agree with something he does, he wants to hear about it on the air. We have free rein on everything in boxing. And I mean everything. Turki took me aside to make sure I understood that. That’s the kind of show he wants. It’s music to my ears. Now the culture of boxing is such that it sometimes feels like you are not doing your job in the press if you’re not generally negative. But my goal is to treat people fairly. Doesn’t mean that I am always going to say good things about the people we cover. But it does mean that most of the coverage isn’t going to be downing the sport. We have had the sense from boxing people for far too long that they did not love boxing. But I love boxing, and I’m with a group of people who really love it too. Joseph Santoliquito is an award-winning sportswriter who has been working for Ring Magazine/RingTV.com since October 1997 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Follow @JSantoliquito.
fighters. And then of course guys who would go on to be legends, like Tommy Hearns, Alexis Arguello, Julio Cesar Chavez, Sugar Ray Leonard and that level of fighter. They played their regular- season games on the regular networks. The winners of those fights fought in the playoffs on HBO – premium pay cable – and the winner of those fights fought in the World Series or Super Bowl on closed-circuit and pay-per-view TV. What happened was, by the time
I am confident in the plan because it makes sense, and because of the track record of the people involved. In the 60 Minutes piece on Dana, the interviewer pointed out that not all UFC fighters are rich and pointed out that some fighters make as little as $12,000 a fight. Most make a lot more, of course. But in boxing? What’s the minimum? It ain’t $12,000. It’s a lot less. There is a much larger middle class in UFC, and “middle class” by the standards of
I was on HBO, HBO was basically tasked with hosting the regular season and the playoffs, because the broadcast networks went away from boxing and the basic cable networks weren’t spending real money on it. And the equivalent of the World Series or Super Bowl was on pay-per-view. So the bigger the fight, the fewer people saw it. When I was at ESPN, their budget was $5 million a year for boxing. That was not major league boxing. It was AAA boxing. HBO was responsible for the sport in North America for putting on everything. When ESPN was spending $5 million per year, HBO was spending 90! But because they had to pick up the slack due to the absence of the broadcast networks, the quality on HBO was inevitably diluted. Still great, but diluted. The goal with Zuffa Boxing is that it will take care of the regular season, and those winners will graduate to Riyadh Season in the playoffs.
In my downtime, I got a chance to be with my kids, take them to school, spend time with my family. The stuff you always hear people talk about when they’re not working. I was able to do the things parents like to do.
Kellerman plans to be back at ringside on a regular basis.
They could have staged fights in front of a totally captive American audience. What happened? Nothing much. UFC and Dana White beat them to it. But now boxing is in a position to get to a place it hasn’t been in a very long time. The Ring: This new show, by the tone of your voice, by the way you are talking, is this a new, reinvigorated Max? MK: In my downtime, I got a chance to be with my kids, take them to school, spend time with my family. The stuff you always hear people talk about when they’re not working. I was able to do
around. You were there at ground zero when HBO fell, followed by boxing on Showtime. Could we see a renaissance with the current power brokers? MK: I think you will see that it could be better than ever. When I was a kid, the way it worked was basically the minor leagues of boxing were on cable TV, the major leagues were on the broadcast networks on the weekends – CBS, NBC, ABC. Back then, starting at 4 p.m. Eastern, you would at least see Rocky Lockridge, Freddie Pendleton, Bobby Czyz, Cornelius Boza-Edwards, Bobby Chacon – so many real good, top-level
a major sport is a nice living. So we’re looking at a situation now where rather than everyone trying to juice every cent out of every fight, there is a league in place, and a plan in place, and a long- term vision in place so that each fight is not a going-out-of-business sale; it’s part of a continuum in a growing sport.
the things parents like to do. And it was awesome. I don’t know if I was ever not invigorated. What you are hearing is my excitement about the future of the sport that I love the most. The Ring: But we both know how this sport can beat you down and stomp on your love for it. It is a sport that is tough to love. Fight fans have been smacked
The Ring: That’s uber encouraging. What is the plan? MK: Dana revealed it. He wants the Zuffa series to produce contenders from 50-50 fights, with the winners getting to the next level. That would be Riyadh Season. Turki and Dana will be investing back into boxing. That’s why I am excited about where boxing is going.
The Ring: How different is this from your ESPN days?
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