Part 1 here.
Boxing Scene: Leave us with great memories of Gennady Golovkin.
Leffler: The first time he trained in Los Angeles was when he trained with Abel Sanchez at Big Bear. But it was Turning Stone in upstate New York where he was fighting. That was his first fight. It was his first fight in America, his first fight that was broadcast on HBO. If I tell you the journey to get him on HBO, it would take a long time. Nobody wanted to fight him. I met with HBO and Showtime. I also met with Epics, who was boxing at the time. It was a very simple pitch. He is the WBA Middleweight World Champion. He doesn't need a lot of money. He'll fight anyone. All he wants is the opportunity to fight on TV here in America. They had never heard that pitch before. His English wasn't very good at the time and he couldn't express his thoughts very well. But the only way I could talk and Abel could talk and he could get on that show was, [was because] It kept getting postponed.
And on that show they said, “OK, will you fight?” So Daniel Geer was fighting Dmitry Pirog. That's how it unified. It was a unification fight. Daniel Geer was the IBF champion, Pirog was the WBO champion. So the fight was decided, and Gennady was supposed to be on the show, but it seemed to be full and he couldn't make it. Then all of a sudden Daniel Geer got an offer from Felix Sturm to come to Germany and do the unification fight there.
GGG is a must for Sturm, and the two-year wait for the WBA title is mandatory. [it was] The only way Felix Sturm could have avoided fighting him that day. We kept putting pressure on him. The only way he could have avoided fighting him was a unification fight. So he paid Daniel Geer a lot of money to turn down the HBO fight and went to Germany.
They called me and asked, “Would you like to fight Pirog?” because they had Pirog with no opponent. We said, “Sure, let's fight Pirog.” So it was supposed to be a unification fight with Dmitry Pirog, who had just knocked out Danny Jacobs, but nobody wanted to fight Pirog. I think that's one of the reasons why Gael ended up fighting Sturm, who he beat in Germany. But anyway, when that fight was confirmed, Pirog got injured. So they were thinking, “Do we keep GGG in this fight or do we make it a different fight?”
And fortunately [HBO executive] Peter Nelson, who was a big fan of GGG, kept him in for a WBA title defense against Polish fighter Grzegorz Proksa, the European champion at the time. He had just beaten Sebastian Sylvester and was a top-tier fighter. I asked Abel, “Would you fight him?” He said, “I don't care who it is. Right-handed, left-handed, tall, short, just put somebody in the ring.”
And sure enough, after training all his life against the right-handed Pirog, he switched to southpaw and appeared on HBO scoring a stunning knockout.
BS: What is your favorite memory involving Klitschko?
Leffler: Vitali Klitschko vs. Lennox Lewis. He was also obligated for a long time, but the WBC said, “OK, Lennox, you can have one more title defense against Kirk Johnson.” Remember, we brought in Vitali. Mike Tyson was going to be the co-star to sell tickets, and Lennox was the champion in the main event. We told Wladimir and Vitali, who were in Los Angeles, “Let's go to the press conference.”
Lennox Lewis had spoken to some of the media and told them he was the mandatory challenger, and as soon as I got out of the car, my friend, media reporter Steve Kim, came up to the car and said, “Tom, Mike Tyson canceled the show. You should put Lennox Lewis and Vitali together.” And all of a sudden, the lights went out. I was like, “Yeah, that's a great idea.”
So we were doing interviews and all the media wanted to talk to the Klitschko brothers, and Wladimir is an Olympic gold medalist… so I asked, [promoter] We asked Gary Shaw if he would do a show with Vitali on HBO. Gary wanted one of his fighters, not Vitali as a co-star. But we had a good relationship with Tim Leiweke at AEG, who owns the Staples Center. They needed a ticket seller, and there are a lot of Russian speakers in Los Angeles, so we got Vitali. If Vitali won and Lennox Lewis won, they would fight as a mandatory match. And sure enough, we got him as a co-star. Then Kirk Johnson got injured and had to pull out.
With just over two weeks until the match, HBO [Johnson] He got hurt sparring. So they said to Vitali and Lennox — and I have to give Lennox credit for saying that — “If you guys want to fight, the only way to save this show is for you two to fight each other. Lennox, if you're not going to fight Vitali, we're going to have to postpone it.” And the WBC said, “OK, Kirk Johnson's injured, so the next guy you should fight is Vitali Klitschko.”
So we knew we had to fight him anyway. And he agreed to fight Vitali. We sat down in the lawyer's office with Vitali and we went over everything and we said, “Is this the fight?” And he said, “I've been waiting a long time to fight for the WBC World Title.” He told me a story about his time on a military base. He grew up on a military base in the USSR. “Sometimes, kids would surround me at my new school. There would be 20 kids trying to test me. If there was only one person standing in the ring against me, it wouldn't matter to me. I'm going to fight Lennox Lewis.”
That was one of the most exciting heavyweight fights I've ever seen, and Vitali was winning round two of four, but he had a big cut. Unfortunately, the doctor had to stop the fight, and Vitali really wanted to continue. Going into that fight, everyone knew Lennox Lewis was the champion. 80% of the fans were rooting for Lennox, because they didn't really know who this big Ukrainian was. And Vitali showed as much heart and courage as he did, and he wanted to continue, so he jumped on the ropes. I can tell you that 80% of the fans were rooting for Vitali. He literally charmed all the fans overnight, but unfortunately Lennox never got a rematch. Instead, he vacated the title. And Vitali went on to face Corey Sanders in his next fight and actually became the champion.
BS: Would the UFC model work in boxing?
Leffler: That's a good question. We take a lot of the elements that Dana White and UFC use in their programming. If you notice the pace of our boxing programming, people love that pace. Sometimes we have eight fights, seven fights on TV, one after the other. We don't have a 20-minute, 30-minute break in between, so we can have that many fights on a boxing program. We've copied UFC in terms of what Dana has created in terms of entertainment and fighters, top fighters willing to fight other top fighters that you don't see in boxing.
This is going to be difficult. There are so many promoters and so many TV platforms that Dana can say, “OK, this is your next fight.” And if someone loses, the genius of the model that Dana has created is that even if they lose at UFC, they can still compete in another UFC pay-per-view event two months later.
Whereas in boxing, if you lose, you might have to wait a year or more to get back on TV. That's why he's able to do that. He's created a model that makes fans want to go to UFC fights. No matter who's fighting, fans know that when they go to a UFC fight, they're going to get great entertainment. We try to provide that same kind of energy. When you come to a Hollywood Fight Night fight, whether it's a Callum Walsh fight or a Serhiy Bohachuk fight or a Cain Sandoval fight, you know it's going to be a great fight. All of these guys are exciting fighters. And that's exactly what we're modeling after Dana.