For a company said to be a downhill slide, Main Events has managed to be in the news and boxing gossip circles quite a bit of late. Not too long ago it was even rumored that CEO Kathy Duva was going to be selling her 29 year old company by spring.
“Absolutely not,” she replied flatly at the mere suggestion. “Categorically no, not even a conversation with anybody.”
It’s possible that this story made the rounds because of her brother-in-law Dino Duva’s sale of 50% of Duva Promotions, a completely different entity, to Don King. Nevertheless, the story began to surface again this week with the departure of long time Vice-President and Matchmaker Carl Moretti, who accepted a deal to become Lou DiBella’s right hand man. People wondered if Moretti was simply timing his move to be the first off a sinking ship.
Moretti accepted the job simply because it was just too good to pass up, he assured the press. “Main Events has been around for 29 years and they’ll be around for another 29 years, or longer,” he was quoted.
Moretti had been with Main Events since 1993 and is the most recognizable figure in the company’s operation. Highly respected in the industry, it would figure that he would leave some big shoes to fill, but who is going to fill them?
Duva remains upbeat professionally while saddened at the departure of a close friend. For now, she remains non-committal about Moretti’s successor.
“It’s too soon; we haven’t decided,” she said. “We don’t have a lot going on in the beginning of the year so we have time to regroup. The members of my staff have really been stepping it up and there might be some way to promote from within. Perhaps we’ll look outside for certain areas because he had other duties other than matchmaking. In my case my youngest child will be going to college in September, so I’ll have a lot more free time soon.
“There’s sadness because I have this close friend and he’s going to be gone. Carl’s been here 13 years. This group [the staff at Main Events] has been together for 11 years. So that’s a big change and we’ll have to get used to it. We’ll find a way to make it work, but the personal adjustment will be tough.”
But still, nearly every news outlet that covers boxing has made some gloom and doom reference about her company, it seems. Lately a website described Main Events in an article as a “floundering outfit.” I asked Kathy if she felt that was a low blow. How does it feel to be portrayed as a “floundering outfit?”
Kathy laughs. Her laughter is infectious and could bring the birds out of the trees. “My staff members went around asking, ‘Why did we get those big bonuses this year?’
“It’s editorializing and with all due respect to the writers out there, you’re not running my business. There are businesses that appear to be thriving and they’re not, and apparently they think because we lost a few fights that we’re doing badly. That’s not how it works. It depends on how much money is coming in and how much goes out, not how many fights you win.
“I’ve been telling people all week that we’ve been through losing streaks before. It happened when we had great fighters here, back in the day when there were more great fighters than today. I think Pernell Whitaker ended it because he used to joke about how he was going to save the family. But the streak went on for about a year after we had gone three or four years without losing a fight, then we went four or five years after the streak [without losing].”
One of Main Events’ stars of recent years, Fernando Vargas, recently gave an interview in which he announced that he was returning in June to fight everyone’s favorite comeback fighter, Ricardo Mayorga, in a PPV event at Staples Center in Los Angeles. According to Vargas he was going to promote the fight and Main Events would not be involved, adding that their bad year just got worse. It was a Q and A type of interview, and at the bottom of the article an editor’s note was added that Shelly Finkel, Vargas’ manager, had notified the site that Main Events would, in fact, co-promote with Vargas Entertainment Promotions. My question to Kathy was if there was any prior evidence that Vargas was disgruntled.
“Not that I’m aware of,” she laughingly replied, placing the emphasis on “I’m.” “I was told by Shelly Finkel right after the comments came out that he couldn’t even explain what those comments were about but we were on board with them and we’re going to be working together. Every fighter wants to start a promotional company so we’ll see how it works.”
I was skeptical of the interest in a Vargas-Mayorga matchup, particularly as a PPV attraction, and wondered aloud why HBO would even be interested and shared my feelings with Ms. Duva. She responded like a true promoter:
“Look it’s two high profile fighters who you like to watch because they’re fun. Who do you think will win?”
I momentarily hesitated, momentarily wondering if it was possible for both of them to lose. Kathy seized the moment:
“See, you don’t know who’s going to win. And you have two fighters with huge personalities, big punchers, exciting styles, and the matchup is just good. I’d just love to see the press conference! When Mayorga fought De La Hoya, Mayorga made his outrageous statements and Oscar was seething. When Vargas fought Shane Mosley, Vargas couldn’t trash talk Shane Mosley because he would look like a fool and he understood that. So that didn’t light the spark it could have because it was one guy and you can’t trash talk somebody that’s not going to give it back. Here you have a situation where I don’t know how the two are going to be able to help themselves. You know, that’s fun. Wouldn’t you watch it?
“There’s a certain factor to this marketing of boxing which has to do with name recognition and these two guys have been exposed well beyond the hardcore fan in their fights with Oscar De La Hoya and [Felix] Trinidad. I think together they’re recognizable enough that we can do the business we need to do to make this worthwhile and I think that Don King [Mayorga’s promoter] agrees and between the two of us we have a little experience in this.”
The Main Events website lists the names and pictures of their roster of fighters, 10 in all. On the surface the page presents a rather bleak picture. Six of the 10 suffered crushing defeats in 2006 on HBO, Calvin Brock, Arturo Gatti, Rocky Juarez, Joel Julio, Jason Litzau and the aforementioned Vargas.
Two of the fighters are no longer with the company. Juarez is a free agent and Malik Scott’s contract was not renewed.
Of Juarez, Kathy says, “I heard that he was going to sign with Golden Boy. I’m not sure that he did.”
He hasn’t as yet. This week a Golden Boy source said that, “They are still negotiating.”
“I think Rocky’s a fine fighter,” Kathy observed. “He’s now working with Ronnie Shields and I think that’s a positive decision on their part. I wish they had done it sooner. There might have been different results.
“There was a time when a fighter lost fights, particularly three of five fights, you weren’t competing with other promoters or offering multi million dollar or hundreds of thousands in signing bonuses. Well I don’t know what to make of that, so God bless him.
“The same thing happened with [Kermit] Cintron. He lost to [Antonio] Margarito and was offered an enormous signing bonus that the person did not follow through on. [Bobby Bostick of Bobby Bostick Promotions] So we are dealing with that in the courts because we had a matching rate on it. When we had a matching rate we thought it was a real deal, not a fantasy which is apparently what he got.”
(Cintron recently saw a lucrative match with Shane Mosley go up in smoke over alleged conflicts with his promotional contract with Bostick after Golden Boy had prematurely issued a press release announcing the fight with quotes attributed to Cintron that he claimed he never made.)
NEXT… Part Two, Friday January 12. Get Duva’s take on her current stable of fighters, her future plans, her approach to the job, getting her fighters on HBO, perceptions about Main Events, and more.
