Part III: A Ring of Their Own
and what happened in Year Two that Caused the Eventual Demise of
AROTO
by Sue TL Fox
Photo Credit: Sue TL Fox
March 21, 2021 Intro to
Series Part IPart IIPart III
(MARCH 21) WBAN has been
documenting the history of the A Ring of Their Own that
was a significant historical footprint in all-female boxing
cards, a series that the AROTO did, and the PPV's with women's
boxing from 2005 to close to 2007. We also discuss some of
the struggles that they went through doing something with
women's boxing where they were way before their time in the
sport. In Part III, WBAN asked Tokyo Rosenthal of the AROTO to
find out what happened in Year Two, and what caused the eventual
demise of the AROTO. Tokyo said the following:
"Before I answer your next round of questions I'd be remiss if I
didn't mention Stuart Breslow, who was an investor in AROTO and
helped our growth. His investment and belief in AROTO were quite
helpful."
For the start of year two we went back to basics. Basic Cable
shows with increased weekly distribution. The AROTO franchise
was starting to catch on. We had always felt that women's boxing
should be presented as an all or nothing concept.
In other words
only women on the women's shows. Women shouldn't be sideshows
on a men's card. So that's how we approached it.
Once in a
while, in order to get a particular fight, we had to edit a
women's fight off of a mixed card, but for the most part we
stuck to our concept. Oddly we continued to be the only weekly
women's boxing series on TV, here or abroad. The talent pool
continued to grow and the recognition of our fighters grew with
it. We felt the fighters were developing personalities, not
unlike the UFC or WWE. Many of those fighters are still fighting
today.
Melissa Hernandez,
Jelena
Mrdjenovich,
Layla McCarter,
Laura Ramsey, and
Chevelle Hallback are among many who continue
to compete.
For better or worse, we spread out across the country, and the
world, building an audience off our televised shows, to help
draw at various venues. We began 2006 in Los Angeles where Kenny
Weiss lived.
For the record, I lived in
Connecticut then so we were definitely a national company. We
found the California commission tough to work with but we
managed. Our "homegrown" fighter,
Laura Ramsey
headlined the card against Erin Toughill
and Suswella Roberts took on
Daria Hill. Laura lost a decision. Suswella eked out a decision over Daria,
to improve to 6-0. She fought a draw shortly after that and then
never fought again. I have no idea why.
Bonnie Canino
brought in Yvonne Reis
from Florida as we continued to be national. This show marked my
return to commentating which I had done for 20 years or so. It
was hard to find commentators that knew a lot about women's
boxing. I was there and knew our fighters inside and out so it
was natural. Well, at least it saved a salary, LOL! Over the
series we had some great color commentators working with us too
including Jessica Rakoczy,
Krysti Rosario,
Corinne Van Ryck de Groot and
Jill Emery.
Jeannine Garside - Photo Credit:
Sue TL Fox
Only two weeks later, we continued our relationship with
Harrah's, this time in Kansas City.
Jeannine Garside continued to
"wow!" everyone and was the hit of the show. Post AROTO, she
would win many world titles before retiring.
It might be
interesting to point out here just what World Titles actually
mean. In our opinion, they mean little. Women's boxing had
picked up a bad habit from Men's boxing. There were too many
governing bodies and title fights were just slapped together. Be
it the WBC, or the WIBA, or any other alphabet group. they all
had little credibility. It was the fighters that made the
championship. WBAN had a "belt" and was very selective in who
they would match up for their belt. There's carried the most
credibility. All this being said, a supposed world title fight
was "sexy" for the venues and for TV so we followed suit. You
also found women matched for supposed titles after just a few
pro fights as women had far less matches then men, and
sanctioned match ups were sometimes hard to find.
Once in a while we got lucky and got to go abroad, i.e., Paris.
Belinda Laracuente, known for almost upsetting
Christy Martin,
was matched in Paris against World Champion Miriam
Lamare. We
made a deal to get the TV rights to the fight in the U.S. It was
a great show and production, and cemented AROTO's relationship
in Europe. The fight was March 18, 2006, and close enough with
Belinda losing, that a rematch was ordered for the coming
summer. The TV looked great to our viewers and regional
networks. What's better then a fight coming from Paris?
I barely had time to unpack as our next show was back in
Edmonton where Jelena
Mrdjenovich continued to draw big time.
And another week later I found myself in Trinidad with Lisa
Brown. Lisa was signed exclusively to AROTO and was originally
from Trinidad, so there we were, fighting for a local promoter
with the name Boxu Potts. The country turned out for their
"favorite daughter" and we had yet another international card.
Maybe this was the strategy, to get fights outside the US and
bring the tapes back home, basically televising the shows at no
expense to us. It felt like we were treading water, but we
weren't drowning. Paris - Edmonton - Trinidad, all in three weeks.
Now we sat down and thought about PPV once again. Feeling we
were still ahead of ourselves in terms of internet streaming we
thought maybe we could go back to traditional PPV on cable TV.
First however we needed to cross promote with our weekly shows,
and better yet, we needed venues to record the shows. That all
came together rather easily beginning in June in Winston, Salem,
NC, Back up to Edmonton on June 23rd, the Laracuente - Lamare
rematch in Cannes in July, and Harrah's Lake Tahoe in August,
which featured the one round KO by Ramsey in a rematch over
Toughill. An aborted Philippines show was followed by a return
to Trinidad in September.
Important note on the Trinidad
show. The main event featured a great fighter named Giselle
Salandy.
She fought, and stopped, Liz Mooney. Salandy was clearly going
to be a major force in women's boxing and was slated to come to
the States and be featured on an AROTO show. Unfortunately,
shortly after this show, she died in a car crash and a great
career was snuffed out.
Kenny was busy editing all of these shows together in weekly
versions as we had made the decision to go PPV in November. This
time we decided to televise the PPV on a delayed basis. We were
prompted to do this by many factors including the venue date
conflicting with the PPV availability. It wasn't the best
scenario but we felt the card was strong, and unique enough, to
draw fans though it was "Jive Live". This wasn't all wrong, but
wrong enough to lose a few dollars on the show. The card
however, was arguably the best we ever did.
Melissa Hernandez v.Lisa
Brown,
Jeannine Garside v.
Laura Serrano,
and Ann Marie Saccurato v.
Jelena
Mrdjenovich. SPECTACULAR! This card would
do a great buy rate today! It turned out however to be our last
full AROTO show. It was appropriate that we signed off with yet
our biggest upset of the series. This was Saccurato defeating
Mrdjenovich by decision. No one saw this coming especially as
Saccurato was a last second stand in for
Eliza Olson. Now
she was a World Champ, something she would repeat two more times.
[Tokyo Rosenthal wrote and recorded a song about stellar AROTO
fighter Ann Marie Saccurato.]
AROTO closed down at the end of 2006 for many reasons, not the
least of all was money. We weren't making any, weren't losing
much, and didn't have any prospects for raising more capital. We
still had several fighters under contract, most notably
Saccurato who we would continue to book in the States and as far
away as Japan.
It was around this time that both Kenny and I
both moved to Chapel Hill, NC, our families in tow. Kenny became
an adjunct professor at UNC and focused on that as opposed to
boxing promotion, be it women's or men's. I had a strange career
path too. I had a minor hit record with a tune called "Edmonton"
which led to recording seven albums and touring all over the
world. As much as I liked promoting women's boxing, music was my
first love and now was a full time profession. As of this
interview, it's been full time for approx. 15 years, and
Pandemic aside, it will likely continue for many more years to
follow.
We believe we made history with AROTO and continue to root on
the sidelines for the various promoters and fighters who have
picked up our pieces and try to accomplish what we targeted to
do so many years ago. FYI, Amy Green grew to be the best women's
boxing publicist out there and Wanda Bruce is arguably the best
women's boxing matchmaker. Peace, Tokyo Rosenthal
