“Fighting Words” — Tom Loeffler builds his next generation on UFC Fight Pass

It’s been more than three decades since Tom Loeffler got into boxing. But Loeffler, as with everyone else working on the business side of the sweet science, cannot rest solely on his past accomplishments. He’s constantly looking toward the future.

Loeffler, who heads up 360 Promotions, runs regular shows featuring prospects who he hopes will develop into contenders and eventually will achieve enough to merit a spot on the list of accomplished fighters he’s worked with.

That list began back when Loeffler was a boxing manager. He signed James Toney in 1994 and was with “Lights Out” when Toney faced Roy Jones Jr. Two other notable names — Shane Mosley and Kevin Kelley — soon brought Loeffler on as well.

Loeffler transitioned roles in 2002 and started up K2 Promotions, named after the two heavyweights in its stable, Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko. A decade later, he went to work on building Gennadiy Golovkin into an attraction. And in 2017, Loeffler’s new company, 360 Promotions, was behind the “Superfly” series on HBO spotlighting some of boxing’s best talent from the lighter weight classes, including Juan Francisco Estrada, Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez, Naoya Inoue, Kazuto Ioka, Donnie Nietes and Srisaket Sor Rungvisai.

These days, Loeffler’s slate of fighters includes one certain inductee into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in former undisputed women’s welterweight champion Cecilia Braekhus, one established contender in junior middleweight Serhii Bohachuk, and a number of prospects.

Those prospects—including junior welterweight Cain Sandoval (14-0, 12 KOs), featherweight Omar Trinidad (16-0-1, 13 KOs), junior middleweight Callum Walsh (12-0, 10 KOs), and welterweight Gor Yeritsyan (18-1, 14 KOs)—appear regularly in the ring thanks to Loeffler’s series of shows on the UFC Fight Pass. That relationship with the mixed martial arts promotion’s streaming service . 

On October 26, 360 Promotions will host its ninth event of the year as lead promoter. Most of them have been held in California, either at The Commerce Casino and Hotel near Los Angeles—where this show will take place—or at the Chumash Casino Resort in Santa Ynez, north of Santa Barbara. 

It helps with ticket sales that Trinidad is from Los Angeles; a number of undercard fighters live in the city or the region; and Walsh and Yeritsyan now call the area home. (A pair of cards, one in New York City around St. Patrick’s Day and the other in Dublin in September, were meant to spotlight Walsh, who originally hails from Ireland.)

This show will be headlined by Trinidad, making his 11th straight appearance on a 360 Promotions show since March 2022. He will face Hector Sosa (17-2, 9 KOs), with the winner moving up higher in the IBF’s rankings for the 126-pound weight class. In the co-feature slot is Yeritsyan, bouncing back from his first pro defeat and fighting for the sixth time on a Loeffler card since June 2023. Yeritsyan’s opponent is a late replacement, faded former junior featherweight titleholder Jonathan Romero.

As for Sandoval, he has fought six times on 360 Promotions events since April 2023. Walsh turned pro on a Loeffler show in December 2021 and signed with him afterward, with all 11 fights since as a member of the stable.

Loeffler recently spoke with krikya360.com about a number of subjects, including his shows on UFC Fight Pass. This interview, , has been edited here for length and clarity.

krikya360.com: What is the intent of the regular shows that you've been running?

Loeffler: We started “Hollywood Fight Nights” [] to build fighters, kind of grassroots fighters here in the L.A. area, to then make the transition to fight on the [Golovkin] shows or the other HBO shows that we were doing at the time, the Superfly shows, because there was a lack of that kind of mid-level show to develop talent.

With HBO getting out of the boxing business, I had sat down with [UFC head] Dana White and we had signed Callum Walsh. [White] had agreed to give us four shows the first year. We wound up having the highest ratings for boxing on UFC Fight Pass, and Dana was really happy with the shows, with the energy of the crowd, with the matchmaking especially.

My commitment to Dana is that there's not going to be any mismatches on the broadcast, as unfortunately we see very often in boxing. And so he liked that, then we extended the agreement and we're at — I think it was 11 shows this year and 12 shows next year. So we're really doing well with UFC Fight Pass. They're great partners, a worldwide streaming service, the biggest combat sports platform with over 220 events. 

We're happy with the support that Dana gives and the UFC platform gives. They have over 40 million followers on their Instagram page. [Note: The UFC’s Instagram has 43.9 million followers while the UFC Fight Pass page has 1.6 million.] And when Dana talks about one of our events or one of our fights, it really has a huge impact. And same thing when the UFC posts on their main page, it really has a great effect worldwide because the UFC fan base really eclipses the boxing fan base right now. I'm a boxing guy and I've been in boxing for 30 years, but this is the first time that I've seen a real initiative to cross-promote between boxing fans and UFC fans.

It was always [a situation where] the boxing fans said boxing was better, the UFC fans said the UFC was better. And this is the first time where we're cross-promoting, especially with Callum Walsh. We've taken him to a lot of UFC events. Dana's spoken about him repeatedly. We just did the show in Dublin, Ireland, with a sold-out arena there with 5,000 capacity. And it's a great cross-promoting tool, especially when you throw WWE into the mix [which is now owned by the same parent company, TKO Group]. When we brought Callum to Monday Night Raw out here in Anaheim and WWE introduced him, I got so many texts. It was like one of the biggest things that Callum's done for his career. The response I got for having him at the WWE show was huge.

krikya360.com: It makes sense to cross-promote like that. I just know from a marketing perspective, you might have a fighter show up at a baseball game or whatever, or in other forms of media. But here you have other combat sports fans, whether it's the UFC or the WWE, and they might largely stay in their lane, but they might be interested in getting to know the personality or watching other fights.

From a promotional perspective, this is also a reliable platform — and not just that, but a platform backed by Dana White. That must be really helpful for you to be able to attract fighters. I remember and how they want to be able to sign more fighters, but they can't do that without dates. So how has having UFC Fight Pass, having these regular shows helped you to be able to grow your stable and grow the fighters within your stable?

Loeffler: There's a lot of points in that question. You know, I was always an HBO guy. We had the Klitschkos on HBO. We had GGG fights on HBO. We had the Superfly shows on HBO with Chocolatito. I really felt like that was the best platform to develop talent and from a publicity standpoint. With HBO, when we had the GGG dates, we would have maybe three dates a year [as contrasted with the larger number of dates with the UFC]. GGG was one of the most active champions at the time. That's how he became so popular. And when you talk about cross-promoting, that was really, that was my mantra.

You talk about baseball games, he threw out the first pitch at Dodger Stadium three times. He was at Yankee Stadium. I think he threw out the first pitch two times at Yankee Stadium. We brought him down to Mexico City for a number of appearances down there. He fought all over the world. He fought in Saitama Arena in Tokyo, Japan, and sold that out. He fought at the O2 Arena against Kell Brook, sold that out. Madison Square Garden a number of times. So we're trying to model that on the cross-promotional side now with combat sports fans. 

You know, Callum Walsh is known by so many UFC fans. They kind of know him as the boxing fella. He's like, oh, there's that boxing fella over there because they know who he is. They know he's a boxer. They know he's supported by the UFC and by Dana. But it's really having a great effect, especially when he had 11 fights over here. I'm using the same template. It's not rocket science, but we brought him to Madison Square Garden twice. He's fought out here in L.A. a number of times. He trains out here with Hall of Fame trainer Freddie Roach at the world-famous Wild Card Gym. We brought him to Boston for St. Patrick's Day a couple years ago, and then we just brought him to Dublin, Ireland. 

Boxing is a global sport, so we want to create kind of a global star with Callum, and he's well on his way. I'd say he's the best-known rising star in boxing when you combine everything with him being able to go to Dublin now as his homecoming in his 12th fight, selling 5,000 tickets. If you saw the fight, you saw the walkout that he had, the energy in the crowd. They were standing and cheering. They were singing the songs. It was a tremendous event over there in Dublin, and we're really excited about the prospects of Callum.

With the dates, the difference with HBO, you never quite knew when you would have a date. You'd have to sync up the dates with arenas. Like I said, with GGG, we had maybe three dates, so we couldn't really sign a lot of fighters and develop them on a regular basis. And my other mantra is activity. When you have a young fighter, they have to be active. 

Umar Dzambekov [a light heavyweight prospect] fought six times for us last year, so when you have guys and girls fighting three, four, five, six times a year, that activity makes a huge difference in developing someone's career also on the publicity side. And the great advantage with UFC Fight Pass is they give us the dates well ahead of time, so I can plot out what location makes the most sense for a particular fight like St. Patrick's Day. 

I already have that on the calendar. We're going to Madison Square Garden again with Callum Walsh for St. Patrick's Day, so that makes it much easier to effectively promote an event when you have months to plan a promotion and to plan the opponents and the undercard. I'm a big believer in the undercard fights. And that's a great thing. I have to give a huge compliment to Dana White, where you go to these UFC shows, and they have fans in the arena from the first fight. The doors are opening. Fans are coming in. The first fight, it's already a full arena. In boxing, you go to a big pay-per-view show up in Las Vegas, and it's half-empty, and you think this event didn't do well, and then by the main event, it's packed.

What Dana's done is develop such a great depth of talent that the UFC fans know all these fighters on the undercard, and they're all competitive fights, and that's what we do. This show, October 26, we have 10 fights, 10 competitive fights [Note: This interview took place before Yeritsyan’s original opponent was shot and killed and the initial replacement opponent wasn’t able to make it into the United States in time], and it's going to be a great value and great entertainment for the fans that are coming on the 26th.

krikya360.com That's a great point. I think back to some of the shows I used to go to in Montreal, and of course, they'd have Jean Pascal or Lucien Bute, but they would have a whole bunch of prospects on the undercard, and because the fans arrived early enough to see them, they became the next draws, the next stars as they moved up into the main event level. You mentioned Callum Walsh, Gor Yeritsyan, Omar Trinidad and Cain Sandoval. What is the game plan from here as they get closer to becoming contenders? Will they remain on UFC Fight Pass, or are you hoping to land them on other avenues?

Loeffler: Well, we groom them and grow their career on UFC Fight Pass. If there's an opportunity for one of our fighters to fight in a big fight that makes sense for his career, makes sense for us, there's absolutely no issues that I have working with someone else to further the career of our fighters. And you saw that with Serhii, and you'll see that coming up pretty soon with these rising stars. Cain Sandoval is a great example of a guy, [from] Sacramento, tremendous fighter, and making waves in the 140-pound division. We have a lot of talent.

As a promoter, I always kind of focused, like when I was working with the Klitschkos, I really only focused on their events and their fights and their careers. And then with Serhii, same type of thing. This is the first time where I've really branched out. 

We still want to keep a tight ship in terms of bringing value to every person that signs with 360. We want to make sure that they get the proper attention, the proper promotion, whether it's on social media, whether it's a lead-up to the fight. You know, each event needs to have the right build-up for it. That was the beauty of working on the Superfly shows: I could mix and match, you know, between Chocolatito and Carlos Cuadras and Estrada and Sor Rungvisai. They were all willing to fight each other, and that was the genius.

Luckily, Peter Nelson at HBO saw that. We had Chocolatito, I think it was three or four times as the co-feature for GGG. And that was another thing. A lot of promoters say, “We won't put on another fighter unless they're signed with our [company],” but, you know, Chocolatito's with Mr. Honda [of Teiken Promotions]. We felt the value for the fans, both on HBO and live, that Chocolatito would bring to the shows, so it was a great combination having Chocolatito as a co-feature and GGG as the main event. 

Whenever they were fighting on the same show, it was the two best pound-for-pound fighters in the world at that time on the same show, and I think that's pretty much unprecedented, and that's really the atmosphere we're trying to bring with the Hollywood Fight Nights, just giving value to the fans, both watching internationally on UFC Fight Pass or live at the event.

It's a great live experience, and it's a tremendous visual experience on the platform. There's no long gaps. There's no 45-minute breaks in-between fights that you see on some of these bigger shows. That's the other thing that we've taken from Dana's model. If you watch a UFC show, it's like one fight is in there, they do the interview, boom, next fight is in there, and that's what the fans appreciate.They don't want to have to wait around, and now it's another half an hour, now it's 45 minutes before the next fight starts. And unfortunately that happens often on the big shows of boxing. We've modeled our shows around the UFC shows, and it's had a very successful impact with the fans.

David Greisman, who has covered boxing since 2004, is on Twitter and . He is the co-host of the . David’s book, “,” is available on Amazon.