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MICHAEL KING TALKS N'DAM VS. STEVENS: "THIS IS A 50/50 FIGHT...THAT'S WHAT MAKES BOXING SO GREAT"

By Percy Crawford | September 29, 2014
MICHAEL KING TALKS N'DAM VS. STEVENS:

"We are going to put great fight cards on with young pros and they are going to be the kind of fights where these guys are really gonna have to dig in to win. It's going to be great matches; both fighters gonna have to challenge themselves. They are going to have to be in great shape and prepared properly and may the best man win. And that's exactly what we are doing on October 1st. We have 3 fights on TV and 3 of the fighters are mine, and I can tell you Percy, I don't know who will winÂ…with some of the things we're doing, we can put a spotlight on the good things that go on in this sport," stated Michael King, entertainment entrepreneur and founder of King Sports, who talked about his upcoming card headlined by Hassan N'Dam vs. Curtis Stevens, their future plans, and much more. Check it out!

PC: When you got into the game of boxing, was there a conscious effort to separate your brand from Don King (laughing)?

MK: Well, I think it's actually pretty easy to separate us if you were to meet me in person (laughing). Although I must say, Don King in his time, was a force of nature. I hope I'm as successful as Don was.

PC: You have had a ton of success outside of boxing in other venues. How do you plan on instilling the success you had in the entertainment and TV world into your boxing business?

MK: Well, I think it's pretty simple, Percy. You're a fight fan. We are going to put great fight cards on with young pros and they are going to be the kind of fights where these guys are really gonna have to dig in to win. It's going to be great matches; both fighters gonna have to challenge themselves. They are going to have to be in great shape and prepared properly and may the best man win. And that's exactly what we are doing on October 1st. We have 3 fights on TV and 3 of the fighters are mine, and I can tell you Percy, I don't know who will win either fight. Hassan N'Dam is 30-1. He is a helluva fighter, but he is fighting a helluva fighter in Curtis Stevens, who is 27-4, and that guy can punch. Most people in boxing feel this is a 50-50 fight. And then if you look at the undercard, we got Miguel Marriaga, who is 19-0 with 16 knockouts, fighting a great Latino fighter in Chris Martin at 28-3. That's another 50-50 fight where some think Chris will win and others think Miguel will win. And then we've got Fredrick Lawson, who we just signed to King Sports. This guy is the Mike Tyson of the welterweight division. He is 22-0 and he's got 20 knockouts and he is fighting a monster in Ray Narh, who is 26-5 and he's got 21 knockouts, and Narh has fought everyone. I'm telling you, I don't know who is going to win any of those fights and that's what makes boxing great. You don't see that too often. When you look at the N'Dam fight, you have two of the top rated middleweights according to the IBF in the world. Most of these champions in the rankings fight one-sided fights because they don't want to risk losing. This is a mandatory fight that puts two of the best against each other and the winner goes on to fight for the middleweight championship and the loser gotta start over. This is what makes boxing such a great sport. Ali and those guys didn't hide from anyone. The guys he fought, he had to dig in to win and sometimes they beat him.

PC: You are also bringing some creativity to the sport. Using the venue outside of the airport to hold fights is something that's never been done before.

MK: I think for anyone that attends my events or just anyone who follows boxing, they outta be there because it's going to blow their minds. There will be bigger network people at this one, a lot of stars, a ton of press, and a great night of boxing. We don't have ringside seats; we have ringside suites with couches and chairs and tables and we have food and drink service. I think the ratings will be bigger than my last show. We want to bring back that fight atmosphere. I want to bring in fighters in their prime and have them in incredible shape. We are bringing this sport into the 21st century. What does that mean? We know these athletes have a phenomenal diet and that's not gonna make him a better boxer, but if he's a good boxer, that's gonna help him put on a great performance. The same program that we are giving our fighters is what Michael Phelps and Tiger Woods went through. It's the 21st century. We have cutting edge physical therapy, we have a sports psychologist, not to get into his personal business, but to see if he can control his emotions and his anger and get to the point where he can focus on what's going on, study his guy, and remember what he is doing and set him up for something later. You can't do that if you're not thinking in there, Percy.

PC: You guys at King Sports won the purse bid for this fight over Stevens' promoter, Main Events. That shocked a lot of people.

MK: This was a no-brainer. I didn't have a TV network deal, but I didn't want these two great fighters to get paid as little as what was being offered. So what we did was put a purse bid in to make it so that if I did lose it, they were going to pay a lot more. We weren't doing it where the sight was paying us money and we had a network deal. So we put in a conservative kind of bid that was very well thought out because not only were people amazed that I beat Kathy Duva and Main Events, but they were impressed that I did it for the number I did it for. I could've just came out and opened the bank book and said I'm gonna get it, but in saying that, I was bidding on what I felt was the best middleweight fight that could be put on. This fight, the victory means a lot and a loss is even worse. And we are obviously doing it at Barker, but I don't get any money from them. I have to pay for everything, but it's a great location. And then on top of that, all the networks had gone through their money and ESPN had spent their money for the year, but I was able to get them to dig in and give us a license fee; a lot more than what they do for Friday Night Fights. That's nothing. That's $40 to $60,000. They put it in the special category since they didn't have the budget left. I didn't get what Stiverne and Arreola got, which was about $500,000, but I got a lot more than Friday Night Fights. But not even remotely close to pay for this event. But I will say that we have had some other revenue streams and sponsors come in and I think I might break even, which is pretty cool when you're looking at $600,000. At the end of the day, I want to work with everybody, Percy. On this event, we are working with 6 different promoters. Most promoters won't work with anybody. And I'm putting them in against great fighters and some of them might beat me. If Hassan loses, that's a blow to King Sports, but it's the right thing to do for boxing and the right thing to do for this TV event.

PC: How is Hassan's training going?

MK: His training is going very well. In addition to the nutrition and the psychologist we have had him seeing, we have him in a state of the art gym training. And by the way, the sparring, we are bringing them in from all over the country. The guys we got can fight and that's something a lot of people don't do because it's too expensive. But to me, if you don't do it, then you shouldn't do the fight. We want our guys prepared. Then the last thing we do, Percy, we have a ton of video on our opponents and we study it like Pete Carroll would study the Denver Broncos. We call that bringing boxing into the 21st century. At one point, boxing was the biggest sport in the world and my goal is to bring it back to the important sport it was. It may not beat the NFL, but I tell you this, you put a great fight card up against Monday Night Football and if it's not the best game of the week, we can beat it. That shows you how powerful this sport is. The thing is, you can't get fans, writers and sportscasters or sponsors behind a silly event where you're screwing people. I'm excited for this night and I can't wait to see how it turns out. It's going to be a blast.

PC: Tell us about your relationship with Sugar Ray Leonard.

MK: Sugar Ray Leonard is a friend of mine for a long time; over 20 years. I guess I started out as a fan and we just became friends and then he had some things that he wanted people to support and we've always been supportive of all the things that he's done. He is very charitable, but you know, today, charity is not an easy thing to raise money for, no matter what it is. But as far as that goes, we've always done all that we can to help him and he's been doing his part to help promote this event. Mike Tyson is also helping out. It's kind of cool when people in boxing want to help.

PC: At the end of the day, those guys don't want to see the sport they love fade away as well.

MK: Absolutely right. It crushes both of 'em. This sport rivaled any sporting event and now it's kind of a niche sport and it's the lowest license fee for broadcasting any major sport, and it's not because networks don't want the programming. They want the programming. They just don't want the silliness that people in the business have given them. These promoters protect these guys and if you want to put those fights on TV, I would rather my guy lose a great fight than win a bad one.

PC: You had your hands on shows like The Oprah Winfrey show and Wheel of Fortune. What is it about boxing that made you want to put your efforts into this sport?

MK: I love the sport, for one, and two, sports is great television and I'm a television guy. We really believe this could be one of the biggest things I've ever done. And why do I say that? Look at Mayweather a year ago. He fought Canelo and in one hour, he generated almost $200 million. That's more than any event period. So from a business point of view, both the biggest programming PPV's in the world are boxing events. And another thing is the profit margin can't get any higher than two guys in shorts and gloves. I think Mayweather picked up $70 to 80 million bucks after the Canelo fight as well. He's been the number one moneymaker in all sports in the world the last several years; not even close, man. Kobe, Lebron, or Tiger Woods, Peyton Manning, none are even close. And here is another thing, because of the silliness of the sport, Floyd makes 100% of his revenue in the ring. Just last year he made like $105 million. The closest guy next to him was about $40 or $50 million. So it wasn't even close, but you look at Lebron or Tiger Woods, the smallest part of their revenue come from the sport they excel in. The majority of the money comes from sponsorships and outside of their sport. Floyd has 0 sponsorships, so that $105 million is strictly from boxing. Could you imagine if he had sponsors? But he doesn't have sponsors because he doesn't have a great image. And the boxing image has a bad image and we want to bring it back to where these guys had deals outside of the sport. The truth is boxing has a bad image and it's a classic case of a few bad apples spoils the barrel. 99.9% of the time, the people in boxing are good people and they love the sport. They don't make a lot of money, but they give 100% of themselves and they are actually great role models. A lot of these guys done great things for the sport and in charities. There are a lot of trainers in this game that don't make any money. Until their fighters get to a certain point, they aren't making any money because the fighters aren't making any money. They dig into their own money and help these kids and develop them and they get them off the streets and get them into boxing and point them in the right direction, and that's phenomenal. That's as good as it gets and you don't hear about those people. With some of the things we're doing, we can put a spotlight on the good things that go on in this sport.



[ Follow Percy Crawford on Twitter @MrLouis1ana ]

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