Boxing News: Iole : Hopefully Winky Can Land a Promoter Who Will Bother to Show up When He Fights

Hopefully Winky Can Land a Promoter Who Will Bother to Show up When He Fights
by Kevin Iole (March 18, 2004)

Give us your feedback

LAS VEGAS, March 18 - Promoter Gary Shaw was still heartbroken on Sunday, less than 12 hours after Winky Wright had won the undisputed 154-pound championship by routing Shane Mosley at Mandalay Bay.

Shaw has been a friend of Wright and his attorney, Jim Wilks, for years. Shaw, though, promotes Shane Mosley. And anyone who knows Shaw knows that he gets more personally involved with his fighters than any other promoter. Shaw's eyes welled up on Saturday at the post-fight news conference as he spoke of Mosley's courage and desire to make history.

On Sunday, he was feeling only marginally better. Across from him sat Wright. In the past, the two had shared many light moments, but it was hard for Shaw to be light at this time. But then his phone rang and Shaw, as morose as he felt, found it hard not to chuckle. Don King was on the other end of the line, telling Shaw that he had just signed Winky Wright to a promotional deal and wanted to include him in.

Shaw didn't want to comment on it - "I don't promote Winky Wright and I don't have anything to say about him right now," Shaw said Wednesday - but Wright did. He acknowledged that King had made the call in what is becoming boxing's biggest courtship since Hasim Rahman found an escape hatch in his contract with Cedric Kushner only hours after he had knocked Lennox Lewis cold and had won the heavyweight title in 2001.

Wright's promotional agreement with Roy Jones' Square Ring Inc. ended after Saturday's fight. So did his managerial agreement with James Prince. Wright is a free agent and is, for the first time in his career, under siege.

"My phone is my enemy right now," Wright said, laughing. "I can't turn it on or I'd be on it all day."

Jones, of course, wants to return as Wright's promoter. Of course, Jones did nothing except to overpay Wright to fight on a few of his undercards. Jones came up with no plan to boost Wright into prominence. Jones didn't map out a plan for Wright's career. Wright only got the Mosley bout by accident.

Had Ricardo Mayorga beaten Cory Spinks in December, it would have been the zany Nicaraguan and not Wright in against Mosley on Saturday. The Mosley fight was by far the biggest moment of Wright's professional life, but Jones, his promoter, chose not to attend. He pulled out the so-called "other commitments" excuse, but unless he was having open heart surgery, no excuse was good enough.

It was reprehensible that Jones wasn't there. Jones can't explain it away by saying he was busy. So was Barry Bonds, but Bonds found a way to be there, but Wright's promoter did not. They may be friends, but Wright should see what Jones has done for his career: Nothing.

But Jones isn't the only promoter trying to sign Wright now. So is Shaw. And so is Top Rank. And, of course, so is King, who promotes Felix Trinidad, the most logical opponent now for Wright.

Wright understands - or at least he says he does - what a delicate road he's headed down. He's 32 and far from a household name. His win over Mosley did a bang-up rating on HBO and a lot of folks who didn't see the fight at least heard about him and will have interest in seeing him at some point.

But Wright ought not to forget the men who really did something for him: Wilks and publicist Fred Sternburg.

It was Sternburg, being paid by Wilks, who for nearly two years has used his creative mind to raise Wright's profile. The sad truth of the boxing business is, in large part, it doesn't matter how well a guy can fight if he can sell and is marketable. He only has to be able to fight a little and needs to know a matchmaker who can pick the proper opponents.

Wright, clearly, can fight. But that's not enough. It was Sternburg who pushed him on the path to stardom, getting the media to take notice of a guy who would otherwise have been ignored.

Don't believe that?

Well, ask most boxing writers at, say, 10 major daily newspapers, to name the world champions at 118, 122 and 126 pounds. The bet here is that less than half of them could do that. And that's not to criticize my colleagues.

Instead, it should serve as a reminder to Wright that he would be one of those the writers could not name had Sternburg not been out there pitching and pushing the last two years.

Wright is going to be promised a lot of things by a lot of people. He's free to hire whoever he chooses as his promoter. But boxing is all too often a deadly business, literally and figuratively. Wright deserves to keep most of the money he's about to make. If he's going to give part of it to a manager and/or promoter, he ought to know exactly what they'll do to earn that money.

Wright, astutely, said Wednesday, "I ain't signing nothing."

And he shouldn't until he's sure that the deal is in his best interests and not in the interests of his manager and/or promoter.

He's the one taking the punches. He's the one risking his life. He's the one away from family and friends for weeks on end.

Hopefully, Winky Wright will come out of this fight looking as good as he did when he came out of his fight with Shane Mosley. But something tells me this one may be just a little bit tougher.