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PROBLEMS OF CURRENT MATCHMAKING CURRENT RESOURCES BOXING The Boxing Record Book The Professional Boxer’s Safety Act requires that professional boxing results be reported by each state commission within 48 hours of the event to the Association of Boxing Commissions (ABC). The ABC, which has no annual budget, engages Fight Fax, Inc., Sicklerville, New Jersey, to handle the centralized recordkeeping of fight results. Fight Fax publishes each year's fight results in an annual edition, The Boxing Record Book, which alphabetically lists the records of only those boxers (approximately 6,000) who fought in the U.S. the previous year. For an update of a fighter’s record, Fight Fax charges $9 for 1, 2, or 3 records faxed and $10 outside the U.S. This record book is over 700 pages and very time consuming to use because the records are listed alphabetically by fighter. The boxers (without their records) are listed alphabetically under each weight class in the front section of the book along with the page number for their records. It sells for $62.00 in the U.S., $67.00 in Canada and Mexico and $85.00 overseas. BoxRec BoxRec.com has a huge worldwide database of over 200k active and inactive fighters (retired going back decades) with over 800k fight results. There are 1020 heavyweights in their database who are active. Click Boxer Location on the toolbar and from a window you can sort by country, region, and weightclass. BoxRec.com is registered to John Sheppard in England. The database of fighters and their records is sortable only by weight class and by country and state. The database is free and includes decades of records. Many fighters have long retired. This database is not sortable by record, the most critical data when selecting opponents. It does enable a searcher to link from fighter to fighter. At each fighter's page, each of his opponents is linked to their record. MakeAFight.com MakeAFight.com is created by a boxing promoter for promoters, comparable to a "Promoters Classified Ads." It lists Events which indicate openings for opponents. The shortcomings of the classified ads type site are obvious. Database Development Using Content Extraction Software Integrated searches of internal and external databases Boxing News There are several news sites. Some are more popular than others. FightNews.com and MaxBoxing.com are probably far ahead of the rest. Their traffic stats are unknown, but the sites mostly discussed in boxing gyms are: FightNews - free MaxBoxing - free and subscription SecondsOut - free BoxingTalk - free and subscription NO MATCHMAKING Fighters' records are not available in a sortable format by result for efficiently choosing opponents. There is no system for offering and accepting challenges for fights and presenting those agreed upon fights in a highly sortable database of made fights for sale to promoters. IMPORTANCE OF MATCHMAKING Difficult Job Matchmaking is the most important and difficult function of a fighter's promoter. No fights, no show. Missmatches or boring fights, bad show. It's the most difficult and time consuming part of promoting a show. To do it well requires a great deal of time, experience, a large telephone budget, patience waiting on return calls, and a great roladex. Critical Shortage There is a critical shortage of matchmakers. If matchmaking were easier and less time consuming, there would be more matchmakers, and there would be many more promoters and shows in venues with facilities with many open dates where there are untapped virgin markets. For a fighter's manager and promoter, it may mean reviewing the records of three to five possible opponents offered by a promoter and reviewing the records behind each of the opponent's past opponents. He then has to find tapes of at least one recent fight of each of the prospective opponents. A Juggling Act The promoter has to juggle the concerns of the managers, trainers, and fighters, negotiate the purses, and pick opponents acceptable to everyone using limited information and resources. He has a limited number of options to offer everyone including any fighters he has under contract. And then he might get stood up at the last minute and is forced to negotiate from weakness with a last minute replacement. No Shows Promoters, television programmers, managers, trainers, and boxers have all experienced the pressure of taking a last-minute substitute because the agreed opponent missed the plane, got sick, or was injured in training. Matchmaking for a good prearranged substitute option in these cases is also very time consuming and critically important to a professional boxer's future marquee value. It requires matchmaking options and evaluating styles, both of which are difficult using available resources. It will take hours to go online, making notes, and through hundreds of pages in the record book to circle each fighter in one weight class. An Anomaly Boxing is the only professional sport where the athletes can pick their competition throughout their careers. That is very significant. That's why GetAFight.com will have such great value to fighters, trainers, managers, and promoters. A source for a large number of offers which can be easily analyzed will be a very valuable resource for everyone in boxing. ENORMOUS TIME REQUIRED FOR MATCHMAKING Before Roy Englebrecht Promotions was purchased by Golden Boy Promotions (Oscar De La Hoya), Roy was growing his company. Roy's quote from an interview with FightNews.com was, "There are locations both in California and outside California that are pretty virgin to professional boxing. If we brought a night of championship boxing to those locations, the fans would come out of the woodwork. I always look at myself as the minor league king of boxing.....I have to come to a point that there has to be a limit on the number of fights I can do, because then it gets to be almost humanly impossible to do more. We could probably do 27 shows by the end of 2001. That really taxes us. It taxes Jerry Bilderrain, my matchmaker, so much that I've had to help a little bit because it's almost humanly impossible." A good manager or promoter will take the time required to develop an undefeated record for a good boxer. An undefeated record is often deceiving. If the picking of opponents is done well, marquee value can accrue. Developing a record that looks good on paper is a function of skill and options. This requires a very time consuming comparative analysis of records and dozens of phone calls. If you were asked to find every 10-round fighter in a certain weight class who has a low percentage of wins by KO and a high percentage of losses by KO, who looks good on paper (has won most of his fights), has a predictable and orthodox style, is not over a certain height, and who lives in the eastern U.S. -- and then you were asked to list them from the highest to lowest in win-loss percentages, it would take you forever using current resources. And you still would have no idea how many would fight you, or, if they would, for how much. With GetAFight.com, it will only take minutes. Fighters can offer and accept challenges, and fights accepted will be transferred to one of three highly sortable database for promoters. Promoters love it when they find two fighters who want to fight each other. - FightersOnline Home - GetAFight Home |