(MARCH 17) In our next segment about the A Ring of Their Own where we have been in the process of documenting the history of the AROTO we asked Tokyo Rosenthal about why do a PPV, and what was the model for doing it.  To catch up with the series, read the Intro to Series, and Part I.  Rosenthal told WBAN the following:

Rock & Sock Productions had done several PPV Specials. One was kickboxing from Harrah's Lake Tahoe and female fighter Kathy Long was featured on it. Another was the Bobby Czyz - Don LaLonde fight with Riddick Bowe as the co-feature.

In addition, I had done several PPV shows while I worked for FNN SCORE including Furious Friday with Roberto Duran from Atlantic City and AWA Wrestling. So moving on to PPV seemed a natural to us. We also felt that this "new invention", called the internet, would be a great place to showcase our fights.

The fact is no one had ever done this before on the web, but it seemed that it would easier and cheaper to do it this way.

We also figured that we could cross promote the show in our weekly program. But old habits don't die easily. Viewers weren't used to watching boxing on their computers nor were they used to spending a lot of time paying for the show with a credit card. We did know that we'd save a bundle on transmission and satellite costs. However, the show would have to have something very compelling that they couldn't get elsewhere to make them go through the hassle of buying the show and watching it on a small screen. We also priced it very low in order to attract an audience. Fact is we put on a good card, but not a great card. We had a great crowd for this show in Edmonton however they didn't buy the PPV because they were at the fights.

Bottom line was we may have made history by doing the first all women's PPV show. We also possibly made history with the first streamed PPV boxing show. Final "line item" was we lost money, not a lot, but we lost! We were looking to supplement our revenue with PPV, as opposed to advertising, which had been futile.

We had seen how the WWE and UFC cross marketed their PPV shows. We had this part down pat. But we were ahead of our time as far as streaming a PPV show on the internet.

Now we had to go back to the drawing board regarding our delivery system for PPV and continue distributing on basic cable and developing our pool of fighters. We finished the year with two of our boxers fighting in high profile matches oddly enough in Germany.

Asa Sandell lost to Laila Ali and Elena Reid lost her re-match to Regina Halmich. It was time to plot 2006 and the world of women's boxing. As we ended our first year, it was odd to not see any competition in terms of women's boxing. Neither individual fights on men's cards nor other all women's cards. It was as if we had a monopoly, but at what price. Kenny and I always said that if everyone knew about the PPV event and it still didn't to a good buy rate then we were wrong about the event. In this case it was a little of each, along with some technology issues.

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