10.12.03 – By Keith Terceira: Earlier today I was talking to a promoter who asked me to do him a favor and try to get a contact number for someone in my area. While attempting to do that I also thought I would combine the contact with gathering a little info on some promising local fighters that are being managed by a true believer in the sport. While many fans focus on the top ten guys, we old timers to the boxing world remember going to the smaller arenas where champions were created.
I go locally as often as I can, buy my ticket an enjoy a night of boxing without worrying about writing or trying to use my name to get in for a free ride. Local and regional fighters donâ’t make enough as it is, let alone giving me gratis tickets or a press pass.
Fort Smith Wild Wings Club and the World Class Fitness Center are two of the places that I like to grab a seat every now and then. Good quality fights , hard throwing honest fighters that believe in this sport.
I’m getting off the subject a bit, but these fighters are exciting. Under the leadership some of these guys have they will be making a splash in the future. Mark my word fight fans and jot down these names Justin Blevins and JD Chapman. These guys are undefeated heavyweights with a good future. Justin is 11-0 and JD is 9-0 . What I started to write about though were not the fighters but the manager and his experience.
Stacy “Goodnight” Goodson has turned his attention to managing as well as boxing. While people in the boxing world talk about changing the sport Goodson has the best most accurate approach. Fighters and the fans first. All the other crap aside. If you ever get the chance to check out his site www.goodnightclubfights.com read his news section and Goodson’s Bugs Life piece, its on the money.
That little writing is what inspired me to try and concentrate on bringing more local fighters to the limelight and not just write about the same few dozen headliners. If I could get 49 writers to cover just the state in which they live, then we would have good fight coverage 24/7 and not have to wait for the Hopkins and Lewis’s of the world to fight once a year. Plenty to yap about, fighting over our local favorites in the forums.
Somewhere in the sixties we loss site of what boxing really was. A blue collar, hard workers night on the town with their friends or co-workers enjoying a brew and a sport as ancient as lager. While fans and writers scream about changes in boxing, we forget that we can change the sport ourselves. Stop the HBO, the Showtime, the Pay Per View for a while get out of your arm chairs and buy a ticket to a local fight. You’ll have a ball and you will create change. Believe me its like taking away your kids allowance, it gets results. You may never go back to the other.
Instead of supporting for decades the same abuses by promoters, handpicked headliners, and fat cat conglomerates that control the sport, just stop. Just Say No!
These guys are your hometown hero’s, football players from your high schools , guys you see in church on Sunday. Only you may not know it. Same goes for the Amateurs in your area. What do we have to lose as fans! After some fights recently its not the quality of the bouts. Support them on the way up and maybe they will change the sport themselves in return. Worse that can happen is you have a good time! Watch a guy go from 0-0 to the top maybe.
Hopefully, I’ll have more from my area to report, if boxing stays in my small town? With guys like Goodson around, I’m confident it will. Writers out there pick a state!
KeithTerceira@aol.com