COLLECTOR’S SHOWCASE THE POSTER ROOM By Dan Rafael
hurt to have promoter, network and casino associates happy to set a few aside. One of the best posters in my collection (perhaps one of a kind, since casinos typically discard promotional material after events) came this way. It is a plastic-like duratran (a semi-transparent image made to be illuminated from behind) that hung in a Mandalay Bay lobby light box during fight week from the greatest fight I’ve ever covered or seen: Jose Luis Castillo-Diego Corrales I. But I’ve also paid handsomely for the right poster in the right condition. My biggest-ticket item is an exceptionally rare poster from the legendary first Arturo Gatti-Micky Ward fight. The Mohegan Sun casino made just a few to display around the property. About 10 years ago, I became aware of one that was signed by Gatti, my all-time favorite fighter (along with Acelino “Popo” Freitas), and Ward. As a gift to myself to celebrate having just signed an ESPN contract extension, I bought it for low four figures. Don’t tell my mom. Storing 5,000-plus posters is daunting but not as hard as it may sound. I have a ton of HBO and Showtime posters that are a standard 29x40. But if you stack a few hundred on top of each other, they still only take up that much space. They just rise a few inches. I was fortunate that when I bought my current home, it was large enough that I was able to make an executive decision to take over a room called “the library.” It is now the poster room. At about the same time I was moving, I lucked into the ability to purchase several flat file drawers from a newspaper that was moving to a new location and getting rid of its office contents. I bought them for cheap and hired some guys to deliver them to the newly appointed poster room. They are the perfect size. The drawer interiors are large enough to comfortably hold the 29x40 posters in stacks and, of course, thousands
that are smaller. The drawers provide me with storage for at least 10,000 posters if, goodness, it ever comes to that. The question I often get once somebody grasps the magnitude of my collection is: How do you know where to find a specific poster? Truth be told, there are some posters listed in the database that I 100% have but simply cannot find. The database tells me I have eight 11x14 posters from when I went to Glendale, Arizona, to cover Kostya Tszyu stopping Sharmba Mitchell to retain his Ring/IBF junior welterweight championship in their 2004 rematch. They’re in the poster room. Where? No idea. I’ve searched. Someday they’ll be unearthed! Generally, the big names have their own drawer. Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. have their own drawers because I have around 100 different posters (with many duplicates) representing each man’s fights. The biggest fights often had several posters: multiple site versions that were for sale, the PPV or network promotional poster and various sponsor posters. They add up. Canelo has his own drawer. So does Oscar De La Hoya. Brothers Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko share a drawer, as do Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield. My posters from the fights of Gatti and Freitas are drawer mates. There’s a “Mexican legends” drawer for the fighters I covered extensively: Erik Morales, Marco Antonio Barrera and Juan Manuel Marquez. There are drawers for PBC, HBO and Showtime events. You get the idea. Incidentally, a poster generally goes in the drawer of the guy who won the fight. For example, the eight different posters I have related to Mayweather- Canelo (29 overall, due to duplicates) are stored in the Floyd drawer. This isn’t for the faint of heart. And don’t even get me started on my program collection.
W hen I returned from Las Vegas after covering the Canelo Alvarez-Terence Crawford fight, I did what has been a ritual for decades. I sat down at my office computer and opened the database I created to keep track of the boxing posters in my vast collection, which has been described by friends as both incredible and insane. I dutifully updated the list to reflect the addition of the four posters I purchased at Canelo-Crawford, bringing the total to 5,186. Of
course, that figure doesn’t include a few hundred posters that aren’t catalogued for various reasons, not to mention what may have been erased from the list in the great computer crash of 2011. This is the life of a boxing poster collector. It is not just a hobby for me. It has become almost a way of life. Ask my wife, who doesn’t love that the dining room table doubles as a place to flatten rolled posters. When the topic for this column was suggested by Editor-in-Chief Dougie Fischer, I dropped some trivia on him: The first boxing posters I bought were from an advertisement in The Ring circa 1987. I was still in high school. Nearly 40 years and more than 5,000 posters later, I’m still at it and still love it. Big posters, small posters, rare posters, common posters, expensive ones, freebies. If there’s a poster, I’ll take it, thank you. Though the vast majority of my collection is from the 1980s to the present, posters have been part of advertising and commemorating fights virtually since the creation of boxing. Despite current society’s
websites and social media to get the word out about events and to entice ticket buyers, but they often still make traditional posters for bars, storefronts and community bulletin boards. Many of the biggest events also have posters produced for sale at the arena on fight night or in the host hotel or casino gift shop. That was the case for Canelo- Crawford. The $20 site poster was available at the host hotel as well as merchandise stands at Allegiant Stadium, where they even came in a tube to keep them from getting damaged. As a veteran, here’s a trick of the trade: I travel with my own tube just in case. I have traveled regularly to cover fights for more than 25 years, so many of the posters in my collection were obtained at fights. But I’ve also bought from dealers, eBay and other collectors. Having been into it for so long, there are fellow collectors I trade with, which is why I always get extras at fights. Many of my posters also came for free because sponsors give them away during fight week. It also didn’t
move toward all things digital, physical posters are still a thing. Promoters rely on digital art for
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