Ultimate Boxxer offers a break from tradition and the chance to create an exciting new brand
The UB event promises to enhance the profile of all its unknown boxers through 'online power and flexibility'
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Your support makes all the difference.There is a version of boxing with a quick chess battle between rounds, several tournaments that take six months or a year to conclude and yesterday something called Ultimate Boxxer was launched.
The first night of Ultimate Boxxer will be in Manchester in April with eight boxers, all unbeaten at the moment, fighting each other in four quarter-finals, semi-finals and then a final. It will take place ten years exactly after Barry Hearn launched Prizefighter one night at York Hall in London’s East End. It’s the same format.
The first UB event will feature fights of three rounds of three minutes each round, with the traditional sixty-second break. So far, very traditional, but the UB event promises to enhance the profile of all the boxers through “online power and flexibility.”
There will be innovative strategies, music on the night and a very different feel. It’s about creating a brand and using existing broadcast and online companies to build the product; it’s Prizefighter for YouTubers and that is a welcome addition to a phenomenally successful British boxing business.
The eight unbeaten boxers in the line-up are aged between 21 and 28 and have had between three and ten fights. They will each receive a guaranteed fee of £2,000 and will not have to sell a single ticket to get paid. It is unlikely that any of the eight boxers have been paid anything like £2,000 before and far more likely that they have made as little as £400 for their fights. The winner will take home £16,000 pounds for winning three times in a two-hour period and that, for scrappers like the eight gathered in a plush London hotel on Monday afternoon, is real money.
In 2008 Hearn put together the first Prizefighter with eight hungry, unknown and obscure heavyweights at the old East London venue. It was packed and after a lot of blood, guts and gore in the York Hall ring, a part-time taxi driver from Belfast called Martin Rogan won the trophy and walked away with £25,000 in prize money.
It was an unforgettable night, arguably the best of the 35 Prizefighters that followed it. The event last took place in 2015 when its novelty had faded and too many boxers had found a way to win by cheating the system and not having three wars. It was designed as a hard fighting event, never a boxing event and Hearn’s motivation was simple: “I want to sit down not knowing who will win.” That was certainly the case most of the time and it will be the same when the UB launches. Several Prizefighter winners went on to fight for world titles, including Manchester’s Terry Flanagan, the unbeaten WBO lightweight who is now fighting for the WBO’s light-welterweight in April.
It is hoped that the UB audience will not just be the core audience of boxing fans, the thousands that subscribe to Sky and BoxNation, but a mixed and younger group, persuaded to watch the first event by sophisticated social media campaigns. It’s possibly an audience that will not be bothered by the raw quality of the fighters and will, instead, just watch for two hours and then watch the other three shows planned for this year. It’s modern, not a revolution.
The man driving the UB is Ben Shalom and he has selected some wise and experienced heads from the boxing world to advise him, guide him and help him put on a series of good nights and fights. Ricky Hatton and Paulie Malignaggi, both former world champions, will be involved and a man called Carl Greaves is in charge of making the matches. Shalom has picked sensibly and Greaves is one of British boxing’s most intelligent operators.
In Manchester all the dialogue will end when eight boxers do what eight boxers have been doing for centuries and start hitting each other. I hope it creates a brand, a model to make some unknown boxers a nice few quid.
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