One of the best self-improvement advancements we can make is asking others if we have a blind spot – something we’re missing that, by embracing, can make us whole.
That thought resonates this week as the International Boxing Hall of Fame basks in the high of the parade and celebration honoring Sunday’s group of inductees, led by record eight-division champion Manny Pacquiao.
Most of Pacquiao’s glamour fights were fought under the Top Rank promotional banner, and that company is richly and deservedly represented in Canastota, New York, by several key officials led by Chairman Bob Arum, matchmakers Bruce Trampler and Brad Goodman, COO Brad Jacobs and its former publicists Bill Caplan, Lee Samuels and Fred Sternburg.
As Pacquiao, 46, prepares to return to the ring after a four-year absence July 19 in Las Vegas, he is fighting for powerful advisor Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions.
And while Haymon and his organization have gone head-to-head with Top Rank over two decades by showcasing overall talent and staging glamour matches like Floyd Mayweather Jnr versus Pacquiao and the classic Tyson Fury-Deontay Wilder heavyweight trilogy, the Hall of Fame has withheld inclusion to several worthwhile PBC-connected veterans making similar contributions to the Top Rank brass.
Is it a blind spot? Or something worse?
Ed Brophy, executive director of the International Boxing Hall of Fame, didn’t immediately return a call to BoxingScene to discuss the matter.
But here’s a public call for the Hall of Fame staff and panel of voters to spend the coming years tending to this unjust slight both by ensuring these names reach the ballot and proposing the nominees are more fully discussed by fostering the type of group conversations the Boxing Writers Association of America employs in nominating and selecting its winners.
Consider the abundance of decades-long dedication the PBC officials have displayed.
The most glaring outsiders at this hour are Haymon and his lead promoter, TGB Promotions head Tom Brown.
In his 25 years in the sport, former music promoter Haymon, 70, has generated several dozen world champions – believed to be in excess of 75 – both as a former BWAA five-time manager of the year and as head of PBC.
The decade-old company launched with a collection of Haymon-advised fighters who branched off from Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions and initially struck several broadcast deals before settling in on Showtime, and now Amazon’s Prime Video.
Haymon doesn’t give interviews – a likely factor in his Hall of Fame snub – but he’s been credited by several fighters for enriching their earnings and lives, and he’s played a prominent role in negotiating the richest bouts of all time in Mayweather-Pacquiao, Mayweather-Conor McGregor, Mayweather-Canelo Alvarez and Mayweather-Oscar De La Hoya while now working with Pacquaio for his return bout versus Haymon’s WBC welterweight champion Mario Barrios Jnr, and staging four Alvarez fights in recent years.
While Haymon has been skewered for interfering with or delaying cross-promoted fights that longed to be made, the massive $600 million-plus backing of Mayweather-Pacquiao proved his position wise, and anyone still chafed over it should consider that event was 10 years ago.
How much penance is required?
Brown is a respected lifer who has been in the sport 40 years, originally serving as the dutiful and effective matchmaker to the late Hall of Fame promoter and his brother-in-law, Dan Goossen, before Goossen’s 2014 cancer death.
Goossen was pegged to promote Haymon’s PBC shows.
Instead, the duty fell to Brown, and the result has been an onslaught of pay-per-view and world-title fights across the U.S., including two fights of the year and increased attention to moving beyond top-heavy cards of the past and creating quality night-long action, such as the July 19 card that includes a 154lbs title defense by champion Sebastian Fundora and the rematch of a 2024 firefight between ex-140lbs champion Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz and Angel Fierro.
Brown and PBC’s gifted, younger manager, Luis DeCubas Jnr., have flexed their matchmaking chops on recent cards funded by Saudi Arabia’s Turki Alalshikh, sending their middleweight champion Carlos Adames to retain his belt by draw over Alalshikh’s favored fighter, Hamzah Sheeraz, and permitting former 140lbs champion Rolly Romero to go upset Ryan Garcia in the May 2 welterweight main event at New York’s Times Square.
In his 30s, DeCubas Jnr’s age will likely increase his wait for the Hall, but he’s been in the sport since tending to the everyday activities of Cuba’s former world champion Joel Casamayor as a teen, and his brilliance in directing the careers of former IBF super-middleweight champion Caleb Plant (multiple millions earned versus Alvarez and Benavidez), middleweight champion Erislandy Lara and former two-division champion Robert Guerrero are considered managerial masterclasses by industry insiders.
DeCubas’ father has appeared on the Hall of Fame ballot for his promotional work that includes recent WBA interim light-heavyweight champion David Morrell, along with another industry veteran deserving of consideration, Leon Margules.
Another HOF-worthy veteran promoter linked to PBC by Fundora, unbeaten WBC light-heavyweight champion David Benavidez and others, is Sampson Lewkowicz, the advisor to Hall of Fame former two-division champion Sergio Martinez.
At 74, the colorful, quotable Lewkowicz is a fierce advocate for his fighters through the ratings processes, and just last week, he pressed to preserve his lightweight title challenger Edwin De Los Santos by not fighting overweight champion Keyshawn Davis and still emerged with a six-figure purse payment for De Los Santos, according to reports.
PBC’s “glue” is its ambassador Sam Watson, whose expertise in fighter relations creates a fiercely loyal culture among its boxers toward Haymon and the company.
The effusive Watson has been Haymon’s best friend for 44 years, dating to their time together in the music industry and the 2000 entry into boxing, and he employs his sons, Brandon and Marcus, in ensuring logistics and fight-week stresses are managed calmly for the stable of talent.
Veteran publicist Kelly Swanson still counts Haymon as a client after working for his first champion, the late Vernon Forrest, along with Mayweather and countless others at PBC through the years after starting as heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe’s publicist in 1993.
Swanson has proposed several story ideas that boxing writers have embraced over time, providing insight beyond ring talent that enrich the public’s interest in the sport’s characters.
Lastly, in a position similar to Top Rank’s Jacobs, broadcast rights figure Bruce Binkow developed from his time working as De La Hoya’s agent in the mid-1990s to preside over the domestic and foreign broadcast rights to hundreds of bouts over the years, including the record-setting Mayweather shows against Pacquiao and McGregor while providing expertise that helped strike the PBC deals with Showtime and Prime Video.
The body of work is stark, as is the wonder of why it hasn’t yet been effectively honored.