The Hauser Report: A Promoter’s Pro Debut

Published

3 years ago

October 14, 2022

The-Hauser-Report-A-Promoter's-Pro-Debut

The phrase “pro debut” is often heard in conjunction with fighters. But promoters make pro debuts too. On October 13 at Sony Hall in the heart of Times Square in New York, Larry Goldberg made his pro debut.

Goldberg, age 45, grew up in and around Atlantic City where he fell in love with boxing. He has an internet-marketing background and, in 1997, founded BoxingInsider.com. In the past, he’d promoted amateur fight cards. Now he was going pro.

If Goldberg’s pro debut had been in Montana or Kansas, it might have been similar to his amateur experiences. But it was in New York. Promoting a professional fight card under the best of circumstances is like herding twenty cats across a football field while a game is in progress. When promoting in New York, think fifty cats.

The New York State Athletic Commission has more rigorous protocols for promoters than any other state. For example, the fighter medical insurance required in New York costs $1,645 per bout. That’s $9,870 for a six-bout card. Line item costs such as hotel rooms for fighters and their teams are also higher in New York than in other jurisdictions.

Virtually everyone wants something for free when dealing with a promoter. Promoting a fight card can be analogous to planning a six-figure wedding on a five-figure budget.

“It’s my first show,” Goldberg acknowledged during fight week. “There’s so much to do. I’m learning and I’m making some mistakes. I’ll lose some money; I hope not too much. But it’s a start.”

Sony Hall is a difficult venue for a boxing promotion. Finding space for changing rooms, medical examinations, and other requisite areas is a task unto itself. Because of the building’s configuration, it costs three times more than the norm to bring the ring in and out.

Goldberg was promoting the October 13 event in association with DiBella Entertainment.

“Larry knows that he can’t make money in Sony Hall,” Lou DiBella (who was in Australia for Devin Haney vs. George Kambosos) noted. “But he’s learning the ropes. It’s like a graduate course in promoting. And it costs money to get an education.”

One might be forgiven for likening Goldberg’s “education” to a diploma from Trump University. The tuition is high, often without much hope of a meaningful return. Ultimately, boxing maven Eric Bottjer was brought in to help the promotion with compliance issues and other matters.

“Eric was a life-saver,” Larry said afterward. “I don’t want to think about what might have happened without him.”

Goldberg hired his own production team and arranged for the fights to be streamed live on BXNG TV with Randy Gordon and Gerry Cooney handling the commentary. He hired a roundcard girl on the morning of the fights. Matt Competello (who Larry has worked with in the amateurs) was brought in as the ring announcer.

The New York State Athletic Commission had limited the number of fights that would be allowed on the card to six because of the cramped quarters in the back of the house. Ticket prices ranged from $102 to $325.

One fight fell out when a fighter who, Goldberg says, agreed to a $3,000 purse refused to get on a plane and come to New York unless his purse was increased to $5,000. That left Larry with only five fights. And he had to pay the $1,645 insurance fee for the cancelled fight because it had already been bonded.

Heather Hardy was Goldberg’s headline attraction and had gone beyond the role of being a fighter to help enormously in putting together the pieces of the promotion. Several opponents for Heather fell out. And for good measure, it rained on fight night which threatened to put a damper on last-minute ticket sales.

Dave McWater (the 2020 BWAA “manager of the year”) manages Ivan Golub who was in the second bout of the evening. Sitting in Sony Hall before the fights began, McWater reminisced about his own experience as a promoter.

“Years ago,” McWater recalled, “I backed Don Elbaum on a show in Connecticut. Don assured me that we’d sell 5,000 tickets. About an hour before the first fight, I went to the box office and we’d sold 259. After that, I decided I’d be better off managing than promoting.”

Then the gods smiled on Goldberg. Surprisingly, walk-up sales were good. Sony Hall nearly sold out. The venue was jammed. The seating was chaotic with close quarters everywhere from ringside to the standing room area by the bar. But all of the sightlines were good.

The ring canvas was gray, not powder blue, and the ring ropes were black. The overhead lights were dimmer than the norm. All of that when combined with the unusually close quarters, gave the evening an old-time fight-club vibe.

The fights moved smoothly from one to the next without the long delays occasioned by the demands of bigtime television.

Fight #1 saw Petros Ananyan (16-3-2, 7 KOs) face off against Paulo Cesar Galdino (12-6, 8 KOs) in a super-lightweight contest. Neither man had much defense and both men got hit a lot. But Ananyan hit harder and Cesar got hit more often leading to a sixth-round stoppage. The fight was notable because Freddie Roach was in Ananyan’s corner and the venue was set up in a way that waiters with plates full of chicken tenders and fried calamari kept walking in front of Roach while rounds were going on. “I did wonder what the f*** was going on,” Freddie said afterward.

Ivan Golub (20-1, 15 KOs) vs. Wesley Tucker (15-3, 9 KOs, 1 KO by) was the second bout. Golub was arguably the most accomplished fighter on the card. But the big ticket sellers were Heather Hardy, Nadim Salloum and Andy Dominguez Velasquez, so the last three slots were reserved for them.

Tucker is a club fighter. During the preceding five-and-a-half years. he’d lost three times to other club fighters and won once. In round two, he scored a knockdown when he tagged Golub and Ivan’s gloves touched the canvas. But then Wesley tired and morphed into a human punching bag. His corner stopped the carnage after four rounds.

In fight #3, Andy Dominguez Velasquez (7-0-0, 6 KOs), a good flyweight prospect, knocked down Ricardo Caraballo (7-1, 2 KOs) two minutes into the first stanza. Ricardo rose on wobbly legs, and virtually everyone in the arena except Sparkle Lee could see that he was in no condition to continue. Unfortunately, Lee was refereeing the fight. So, Caraballo took more unnecessary concussive blows to the head before he was knocked down again and the fight ended.

Fight #4 featured Nadim Salloum (8-1, 3 KOs) vs. Jorge Leandro Capozucco (4-0, 3 KOs). Salloum, age 28, was born in Lebanon and now lives in Brooklyn. He’s a ticket-seller, having developed a significant following in the Lebanese-American community. His ring skills aren’t as good as his marketing. That said, Leandro only had one punch – an arcing overhand right that landed more often than it should have because Salloum has a porous defense. But Salloum also had a more varied arsenal and more power than Leandro. Referee Steve Willis stopped the fight in round six.

Then it was time for the main event – Heather Hardy (22-2, 4 KOs) vs Calista Silgado (20-15-3, 15 KOs, 3 KOs by). Hardy (who moved from 126 to 135 pounds last year) had lost her last two outings by decision against Amanda Serrano and Jessica Camara and hadn’t won a boxing match since 2018. Silgado was competing at 118 pounds as recently as May of this year and had lost four of her most recent five fights. Her one victory during that stretch came against a woman who has had two fights in her entire ring career and been knocked out in both of them.

Silgado had flown to New York from Miami and arrived at 11:30 on Tuesday night. She weighed in on Wednesday, fought on Thursday, and flew back to Miami on a 5:00 AM Friday flight. Such is the life of a B-side fighter.

Hardy-Silgado was scheduled for six two-minute rounds. Once the fight began, it was clear that Heather’s reflexes have slowed noticeably since her prime years. Calista looked old and tired and had powder-puff fists. It wasn’t a hard fight to score. Two judges appropriately ruled 58-56 in Hardy’s favor. One judge gave Heather all six rounds and shouldn’t be assigned to judge again absent extensive retraining.

Hardy is forty years old. Her defense has always been suspect. She’s tough and has a fighting spirit. But that alone doesn’t cut it in boxing, particularly at age forty. The punches add up for women fighters as inexorably as they do for men. Now would be a good time for Heather to stop fighting.

At evening’s end, Goldberg’s father (who was at the show) told him, “Congratulations! This was your second bar mitzvah.”

So . . . Where does Larry go from here?

He came out of the promotion with his honor and reputation intact. He lost some money but not as much as he feared he might.

“I’ll be able to sleep well tonight for the first time in two months,” Goldberg said when the show was over. “I can’t believe this worked out as well as it did because it could have gone really bad. I was petrified that things out of my control would go wrong. I’ve got a lot to digest. But now that I know how the sausage is made, it should be easier for me next time. Next time, I’ll know how to save money on hotel rooms and airfare and all the other things that add up. I’d like to promote at Sony Hall again. I think I can make the numbers work and turn a profit there. I’d like to promote a fight card in Atlantic City. That’s one of my goals. Maybe I’ll turn Boxing Insider into a streaming platform. There’s so much to think about.”

Meanwhile, give Goldberg credit for loving boxing and putting his money where his heart is.

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – In the Inner Sanctum: Behind the Scenes at Big Fights – was just published by the University of Arkansas Press. In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

Thomas Hauser

Thomas Hauser is the author of 52 books. In 2005, he was honored by the Boxing Writers Association of America, which bestowed the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism upon him. He was the first Internet writer ever to receive that award. In 2019, Hauser was chosen for boxing's highest honor: induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Lennox Lewis has observed, “A hundred years from now, if people want to learn about boxing in this era, they’ll read Thomas Hauser.”

Up Next

Tyson Fury Trilogy Announced Against Derek Chisora. True or False?

Don't Miss

Avila Perspective, Chap. 207: Boxing Showdowns in London, Melbourne and Brooklyn

Avila Perspective, Chap. 322: Super Welter Week in SoCal

Published

6 hours ago

April 18, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-322-Super-Welter-Week-in-SoCal

Two below-the-radar super welterweight stars show off their skills this weekend from different parts of Southern California.

One in particular, Charles Conwell, co-headlines a show in Oceanside against a hard-hitting Mexican while another super welter star Sadriddin Akhmedov faces another Mexican hitter in Commerce.

Take your pick.

The super welterweight division is loaded with talent at the moment. If Terence Crawford remained in the division he would be at the top of the class, but he is moving up several weight divisions.

Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) faces Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs) a tall knockout puncher from Los Mochis at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, Calif. on Saturday April 19. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also features undisputed flyweight champion Gabriela Fundora. We’ll get to her later.

Conwell might be the best super welterweight out there aside from the big dogs like Vergil Ortiz, Serhii Bohachuk and Sebastian Fundora.

If you are not familiar with Conwell he comes from Cleveland, Ohio and is one of those fighters that other fighters know about. He is good.

He has the James “Lights Out” Toney kind of in-your-face-style where he anchors down and slowly deciphers the opponent’s tools and then takes them away piece by piece. Usually it’s systematic destruction. The kind you see when a skyscraper goes down floor by floor until it’s smoking rubble.

During the Covid days Conwell fought two highly touted undefeated super welters in Wendy Toussaint and Madiyar Ashkeyev. He stopped them both and suddenly was the boogie man of the super welterweight division.

Conwell will be facing Mexico’s taller Garcia who likes to trade blows as most Mexican fighters prefer, especially those from Sinaloa. These guys will be firing H bombs early.

Fundora

Co-headlining the Golden Boy card is Gabriela Fundora (15-0, 7 KOs) the undisputed flyweight champion of the world. She has all the belts and Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1, 3 KOs) wants them.

Gabriela Fundora is the sister of Sebastian Fundora who holds the men’s WBC and WBO super welterweight world titles. Both are tall southpaws with power in each hand to protect the belts they accumulated.

Six months ago, Fundora met Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz in Las Vegas to determine the undisputed flyweight champion. The much shorter Alaniz tried valiantly to scrap with Fundora and ran into a couple of rocket left hands.

Mexico’s Badillo is an undefeated flyweight from Mexico City who has battled against fellow Mexicans for years. She has fought one world champion in Asley Gonzalez the current super flyweight world titlist. They met years ago with Badillo coming out on top.

Does Badillo have the skill to deal with the taller and hard-hitting Fundora?

When a fighter has a six-inch height advantage like Fundora, it is almost impossible to out-maneuver especially in two-minute rounds. Ask Alaniz who was nearly decapitated when she tried.

This will be Badillo’s first pro fight outside of Mexico.

Commerce Casino

Kazakhstan’s Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0, 13 KOs) is another dangerous punching super welterweight headlining a 360 Promotions card against Mexico’s Elias Espadas (23-6, 16 KOs) on Saturday at the Commerce Casino.

UFC Fight Pass will stream the 360 Promotions card of about eight bouts.

Akhmedov is another Kazakh puncher similar to the great Gennady “GGG” Golovkin who terrorized the middleweight division for a decade. He doesn’t have the same polish or dexterity but doesn’t lack pure punching power.

It’s another test for the super welterweight who is looking to move up the ladder in the very crowded 154-pound weight division. 360 Promotions already has a top contender in Ukraine’s Serhii Bohachuk who nearly defeated Vergil Ortiz a year ago.

Could Bohachuk and Akhmedov fight each other if nothing else materializes?

That’s a question for another day.

Fights to Watch

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Charles Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) vs. Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs); Gabriela Fundora (15-0) vs Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1).

Sat. UFC Fight Pass 6 p.m. Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0) vs Elias Espadas (23-6).

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

Published

2 days ago

April 16, 2025

TSS Press

TSS-Salutes-Thomas-Hauser-and-his-Bernie-Award-Cohorts

The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.

Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.

Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11^th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)

Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.

The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).

Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”

A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.

Other winners:

Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon

Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney

Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire

Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix

The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.

The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

Published

3 days ago

April 15, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Mekhrubon-Sanginov-whose-Heroism-Nearly-Proved-Fatal-Returns-on-Saturday

To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.

He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.

Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.

“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.

“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)

Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.

During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”

He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.

He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.

On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.

Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.

If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!