POUGHKEEPSIE — You hear the words "boxing" and "dead" together more and more these days. Advancing the notion are usually the mixed-martial arts crowd and a media that thinks an uppercut is a type of haircut.
Boxing isn't dead. But the marketing and promotions arms that should be lifting the sport need a face lift. You can find quality boxing cards in towns across America. But it's hard to support boxing when its promoters do such a lousy job supporting each other.
Mixed-martial arts won't kill boxing. As Kevin Rooney, who trained Mike Tyson in his prime, said on Friday night, "Boxing will never be taken over by anybody."
Rooney, still working fighters out of a Catskill gym, was at a pub/restaurant called Mahoney's next to the train station. He came to help promote a card on March 27 at the nearby Mid-Hudson Civic Center. Rooney was joined by at least a dozen local fighters and their connections.
And it's here, amid happy-hour noise getting the best of a muffled microphone, where promoter Brian Burke and his supporting cast unveiled the blueprint for boxing's renaissance.
Burke is planning to have nine fights on the card. About half of the 18 fighters are local talent, giving the card an identity and fans an instant rooting interest.
The card won't be televised nationally, no less draw a pay-per-view audience. Burke won't get rich off of it. But he will be helping build the sport in the Hudson Valley. He will draw interest from Albany to New York City, both boxing-rich areas, by putting fighters from those areas on the card.
That means on one night in Poughkeepsie, fans from the state's capital to the five boroughs will be represented.
Forget the whole MMA vs. boxing argument. The only way MMA takes over boxing is if boxing allows it to happen. The two sports can do more than coexist. They can both thrive.
The future of boxing lies in generating interest at the grass-roots level, working from the ground up. The sport still generates enormous audiences for major fights, for the Floyd Mayweather Jrs. and Manny Pacquiaos and the like. Boxing needs to start laying a firmer foundation. It needs promoters like Burke reaching out to managers and trainers to work for the common good of the game. And Burke and his associates must work overtime to promote and market the card, to draw the fringe fan as well as the diehard.
Burke's goal of four to six local-oriented cards annually at the Civic Center can serve as a tremendous asset for boxing. Because the Hudson Valley has at least two potential champions, welterweight Daniel Sostre (10-3, 4 KOs) of Highland and Luis Orlando DelValle (8-0, 6 KOs), scheduled to headline a talented stable of local pros on the card. (Burke and DelValle's promoter, Lou DiBella, are negotiating DelValle's purse, and it's crucial that they make sure the popular Newburgh Boxing Club featherweight fights on this card.)
"I'm saying it right now," said Highland's Anthony Bongiorni, who manages Sostre and three other fighters, "the hottest saying around is, 'Think local first.' If you don't think local first, you can't expect to bring in the support."
Three Bongiorni fighters will be on the card. "We are right in the middle (of New York City and Albany)," he says. "There's nothing happening (in the Hudson Valley)."
Until now.
"I think we are doing it the right way," Bongiorni says.
They are absolutely doing it the right way. Now they must make sure everybody knows what will take place on March 27 at the Mid-Hudson Civic Center.
kgleason@th-record.com
Source: recordonline.com
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