(MARCH 15) Earlier this
week we announced that we would be documenting the history of
the A Ring of their Own, of Rock and Sock Promotions.
In
the intro to our story, I talked about the era of this
organization that occurred between 2005 and 2007 that were the
some of the significant grassroots for a all-female boxing
series---and PPV featuring female boxing cards.
The first thing I wanted to
ask Tokyo Rosenthal about the AROTO was the obvious----WHAT made
him come up with the idea to do an all-women's boxing series?
Rosenthal told WBAN the following:
We had been promoting boxing at The Stratosphere in Las Vegas
and Harrah's in Laughlin, Nevada. The casino operators always required
that we put at least one women's fight on the card. They
rightfully felt that the crowd liked these fights as they were
faster paced.
I said that we had been
getting a good response to the women's fights so maybe we could
try an all "Girls" card. As we kicked it around further we
realized that we were the only ones thinking about this and we
could basically put on an all-women's card every month as there
was a shortage of fights for women. We also felt the economics
of women's fights was affordable. The women fighters were a lot
more reasonable in their demands and basically just wanted a
chance to show their wares. They had a lot of passion, almost
like amateur boxers. Anyway---what did we have to lose?
We decided to put out a press release announcing the series. We
named it "A Ring Of Their Own" after the movie about women's
baseball called "A League Of Their Own". There was many
similarities between the two.
Elizabeth Kerin (left) - Shelley
Burton
Photo credit: Mary Ann Owen
We didn't expect much reaction and
we couldn't have been more wrong. Within 48 hours the Silverton
Hotel in Las Vegas
signed on to host the premier episode on
January 29th, 2005. My phone was ringing off the hook with calls from
female fighters all over the country. They were willing to pay
their own way to fly in for a fight and didn't really care what
we paid them, or if we paid them. They just wanted to fight and
support the series.
The excitement hit another level when we realized that we could
squeeze out a budget to televise the fights on various regional
sports networks. This gave the series a boost in the credibility
department and opened the door to other venues wanting to host
the series because of the TV exposure.
Wanda Bruce-Countiss (matchmaker for the
series with Tokyo)
Now we needed to match some fights and get some publicity. We
employed Wanda Bruce to assist us in matchmaking as she had
already had success with women's boxing in Washington D.C. She
didn't disappoint---nor did Amy Green, our publicist. It seemed
the entire women's boxing community came out of the woodwork to
assist us without putting their hands out for payment.
Elena "Baby Doll" Reid Photo
credit: Mary Ann Owen
Our main event was stellar. It was Elena Reid versus Lakeysha
Williams. Elena was coming off a disputed draw for the world
title against Regina Halmich in Germany and was one of the most
exciting fighters around. Wanda came up with the perfect
opponent to test Elena, and perhaps beat her. It was veteran
boxer, Lakeysha Williams. We rounded out the card to five
fights. Stand outs that night included Swedish amateur champ,
Asa Sandell, who would go on to fight Laila Ali in Berlin, and
Shelley Burton, soon to be a champion herself. The TV production
truck was booked and we had just enough left in the budget to
bring in the perfect ring announcer for this event, Mark Beiro.
The Silverton was sold out.
My prior experience at clearing
Cable Sports Networks came in handy as we cleared about half the
country. And Amy delivered a feature story in ESPN Magazine. In
typical fashion we were now concerned with the next show as we
wanted to maintain momentum. So we spent the post fight party
discussing possible match ups and venues for the next show.
We didn't have to look too far for the next show that took
placed on March 26, 2005. It was in our
old stomping grounds, Harrah's in Laughlin.
This should have
been called the night of the upsets. No one would ever accuse us
of poor match making as it was one upset after the other. First Asa Sandell had to be happy with a draw against Yolanda Swindell.
Highly touted Jennifer Salinas dropped a decision to Heather
Percival. Next, Shelley Burton got stopped by Akondaye Fountain.
But the biggest surprise of the night was Elena Reid getting
stopped by Alicia Ashley. Ashley was 37 and had never stopped
anyone. This set back Reid's rematch plans with Halmich. This
show was outdoors and it rocked the Colorado River which was
right next to the venue. Incidentally, we would record the
entire night's fights and then split them up into 3 or 4 one
hour shows for syndication on the regional sports networks. How
could we possibly keep up this quality of match ups?
The answer is we couldn't. We put together a show in Georgetown,
Guyana on May 28, 2005, that presented a lot of problems.
The
first issue was that we farmed out many of the matches to a
local Guyanan promoter. With the help of the great
Bonnie Canino
we brought in some fighters from Florida and managed to make
some decent matches for Ria Ramnarine and Mirasol Miranda. That
along with Heavyweight Gwedolyn O'Neil rounded out a somewhat
rugged card. The bigger issue was the TV. We always had control
of our own TV production but we couldn't put a TV Production
truck on the plane so we were at the mercy of the local TV
producers as well as the lighting directors. Bottom line is
while the show took place, the TV was useless. We were in the
process of looking for advertisers and investors and this didn't
help our image. We needed something big to put us back on track.
We looked North!
I had been bringing fighters to Edmonton, Alberta for years but
I had no idea though that it was such a hot bed for women's
boxing.
I called my old friend Glen Carriere and asked if he was
interested in co-promoting an all women's show with us. Before
the day was out we had put a card together that was basically
Canada versus the U.S. The date would be June 18, 2005. The
venue was the Shaw Conference Center and TV was provided by TSN.
Wanda teamed up with Glenn's match makers and we were on our way
to erasing the memory of Guyana. Asa Sandell flew in to get her
career back on track beating a hometown favorite named Donna
Logue. Lisa Brown (10-1) won a war over Kelli Cofer (10-1). But
the big event, and soon to be rivalry, was Edmonton's Jelena
Mrdjenovich against Layla McCarter.
Layla injured her arm and
gutted out the 10 rounds while Jelena won the decision. TV was
perfect, the fights were great, and we found a new venue and
partner that we could call upon several times a year to promote
with. Now we were wondering if PPV was a possibility.
Stand by for Part II!
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