Our own Larry Goldberg was the subject of a recent story at Ring Magazine online, written by the very capable Ryan Songalia, who did a good job of covering his journey from website publisher to promoter.
The story discusses Larry growing up in the Atlantic City area and being around all the boxing action at a time when it was very “hot.” And it moves into his evolution into the boxing site BoxingInsider.com in 1997, and how it grew in traffic through its coverage of the major fights.
But the real intrigue, as it turns out, was in what was going on in the industry itself. In the process of observing what went on in the promotion of his friend’s wrestling shows, his interest turned to becoming a promoter himself.
He was cautious, with plans to “sponsor” amateur boxing shows for a while, and he did a Ringmasters event at Sony Hall, which is located in the Times Square district of Manhattan. But Larry explained to Songalia that a friend he had met on his frequent visits to Gleason’s Gym accelerated that agenda. “Heather (Hardy, a former world champion) basically takes me out with her friends, she looks at me and says you’re promoting my next fight.”
And that’s exactly what he did, in effect becoming a genuine “boxing insider” himself.
It has been something of a whirlwind, as Larry has discovered that there is a big adjustment period, and it is an ongoing process. When you’re a promoter, not everything is within your control, and if you think business should be done in a certain way, and it isn’t, you have to roll with the punches, to pardon a pun.
Larry pointed out one circumstance where a manager withheld the availability of one of his fighters because he did not get a slot for another of his fighters, and because of that, a fighter lost an opportunity.
From the story:
“All this time Fighter A has no idea that the reason his fight fell apart or he got short money is because the whole situation wasn’t about Fighter A, Fighter A was used as leverage for another fighter to get a deal. Every once in a while these situations come up and I make a phone call but what are you gonna do? You tell someone this and you blow the deal,” said Goldberg.
The idea that things like that can and will happen are a stark reality, but it nonetheless a reality, whether one likes it or not. “One thing I learned very early on is, nobody’s ever gonna change boxing,” he told Songalia.
And speaking of stark reality, it’s the kind of thing one couldn’t really know unless they saw it from a first-person perspective. There’s a big difference between being a member of the media, going to fights with press passes, and not only being where the “sausage is made,” but in fact having to make it yourself.
One of the intriguing parts of Songalia’s story involves Boxing Insider Promotions‘ expansion into a new market, which, for Larry, is familiar territory, because he is in the process of securing a location on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. And this is where readers should sense the real significance of that move; Goldberg would have a real opportunity to simultaneously re-establish club show boxing in fabled boxing locales – Manhattan (which many New Yorkers refer to as “the city”) and the Atlantic City casinos.
And Larry is determined to do it the right way – even as he is navigating the jungle that is the pro boxing industry.
Such a thing would be worthy of a whole lot more attention in the future.
