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The Late, Late UK Update (continued)
Open Letter from Frank Warren
by James McDonnell (January 7, 2004)

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Dear Claude,
I am writing to you concerning your comments in your last column regarding Matt Skelton and Audley Harrison, which I find bias especially in light of the letter I wrote to you on 8th December 2003 and Gavin Evans' poorly researched and written piece concerning Sky.

Firstly I would like to put right the inaccuracies in Gavin Evans' piece concerning Sky. He stated Joe Calzaghe had never had terrestrial television exposure.

The facts are when Joe Calzaghe turned professional he had a number of fights on BBC TV and in fact won his British Title and defended it on that network. He also had 3 ABA victories televised by them. He signed with me after having nineteen fights for his former managers Duff and Lawless and his promoter Jarvis Astaire who then made a complaint to the British Boxing Board of Control.

In their evidence they stated Joe Calzaghe was not an attraction although at least ten of his fights had been on BBC. In Joe's evidence he said he could not afford to pay his mortgage and was overdrawn at the bank.

Lennox Lewis' first four fights were not even televised, he then had seven fights on ITV and one on BBC back in 1991, 13 years ago. Of those eight fights six were 6 to 8 rounder undercard fights and two were championships. Lewis has had forty four fights, including the Rahman fight only nine were on terrestrial TV. Sky televised 33 of his fights the other 2 were on Wire TV.

Naseem Hamed was previously with Mickey Duff and Barry Hearn, he subsequently signed with me and only had eight fights on ITV, the majority of which were Intercontinental title fights, some on the undercard of my promotions. At that stage he was not a major celebrity and none of these fights were broadcast back to the US.

If you cared to check the facts, you will see that after he won the World Title he fought on many undercards such as Steve Collins v Nigel Benn, most of these fights were broadcast by Showtime in the States. It was then his career really took off. He states that when I did my deal with Sky, "ITV effectively threw in the towel and except for a brief comeback through what became ITV Digital, have remained out of the game ever since". This is totally incorrect.

In fact ITV signed a deal with Matchroom to televise a number of shows which featured fighters including Michael Ayers and Eamonn Loughran for over a year.

After the Matchroom deal was cancelled ITV1 televised a number of John Hyland WBU promotions featuring Shea Neary, Colin Dunne and Peter Culshaw for nearly two years.
I understand ITV pulled out of boxing because of alleged dispute behind the scenes with Barry Hearn and that Hyland's WBU promotions were not getting ratings.

He states that Nigel Benn never fought any big named fighters. That is an insult and untrue. Besides McClellan Nigel fought the likes of Doug DeWitt, Iran Barkley, Chris Eubank, Henry Wharton, Steve Collins, Michael Watson and Robbie Sims. Some of these fights took place in the States and were broadcast in America. He was involved in eleven of your "beloved WBC title" fights making a number of mandatory defences against the number one WBC contenders.

Evans goes onto say that "Genuine world titles - or at least those from the "big three" (WBC, WBA and IBF) - become a rarity" and calls the WBO "minnows".

If he had cared to check the boxers that held the "minnows" title he would have found that over a period of time quality fighters such as Barrera who refused to recognise the WBC, Michael Moorer, Ricardo Lopez, Thomas Hearns, De La Hoya, Naseem Hamed, Vitali Klitschko, Nigel Benn, Gerald McClellan, Dariusz Michaelczski, Michael Carbajal, Baby Jake Matlala, Johnny Tapia, Joe Calzaghe, Gabriel Canizales, Acelino Freitas, Ronald Winky Wright, Riddick Bowe, Johnny Nelson and the current IBF Champion Chris Byrd have all held their titles and some of these boxers were considered to be the best in their weight division.
How can Evans say that Brodie v Chi, who in the "Independent Rankings" were ranked 9 and 42 compared with Harrison v Medina, who in the "Independent Rankings" were 8 and 5 are better quality fighters because it was a WBC title. For the record, Brodie twice pulled out of fights with Scott Harrison.

I very rarely promote IBF fights because they went into bankruptcy and for what they did to Naseem Hamed when he was their champion and they installed Lizaraga as his mandatory. Hamed vacated the IBF title as American TV were not interested in buying Lizaraga.

Also I would not pay bribes to the IBF to rate my fighters.

Premier organisations? Look at the judging of Clinton Woods v Glencoffe Johnson.
With regard to the WBC, who are also bankrupt, I could give you a long list of grievances I have, but let's just reflect on the most recent. The judging and handling of Brodie v Chi result, plus the subsequent purse offer debacle, are you telling me that the WBC and the way they have behaved and act are a "genuine" world body? I am sure Graciano Rocchigiani would argue that point.

So concerned were the British Boxing Board of Control with the WBC that they asked for copies of their accounts and other documents which I understand were not received. The Board then resigned from the WBC Board of Governors, subsequently I believe as a face saving exercise they did the same with other organisations.

Add the WBA as well with the way they have recently come up with 'Super Champions', with the WBC following suit with their 'Emeritus Champions', it is a joke.

I have written to you on many occasions concerning Ricky Hatton, but Evans again states that he has not beaten any world ranked fighters, has he forgot he fought the "genuine WBC" ranked number 4 Eamonn Magee. When we made Mikhail Krivolapov he was ranked by the WBC number 2 and the WBC number 1 Branco refused to fight him.

I personally regard the WBO as the best organisation. During the time of the present Board of Governors there has not been any federal or criminal investigations into them.

Evans goes onto to say that Conteh, Buchanan, Stracey and Cooper are household names, but does he know how many fights Ken had on British TV? Is he aware that when Ken fought Jim Watt it was in front of 400 punters in a Glasgow sporting Club. Most of Buchanan's fights in London were also in sporting clubs and not televised?

How many fights did John Conteh and Co have televised on US television - only a few and Henry Cooper would have had only a couple televised. Whilst they were all good boxers the facts are Calzaghe, Hamed and Hatton have had more fights televised in the US and indeed in the UK than any of these fighters.

I would be interested to know if those fighters were fighting today what they would think of Sky TV, I believe they would welcome Sky as it would have given them the opportunity to earn decent purses. It is no secret that all of them apart from Jim Watt all have had unfortunate financial difficulties.

He goes onto talk about Jack Bodell and fighters of this era. But again he fails to recognise that in their day there was only two TV channels ITV and BBC, and the BBC had a monopoly on domestic boxing.

Back in those days London had two or three evening papers each publishing five editions per day. Today newspapers are football orientated and Sports Editors budgets are continually being cut, but most dailies have a weekly dedicated boxing column.

Today there are 5 terreristal channels of which four of them broadcast boxing and on satellite there are 350 channels, there is more boxing broadcast now than ever on TV in the UK.
The TV audiences today are fragmented, the viewers today chose whether they want to watch sport, drama and DIY programmes etc. If you go back only 10 years, programmes such as Eastenders were drawing 20 million audiences they are now just over half that, such is the British TV culture now.

In Cooper's time a pop star needed to sell 1 million records to get a number 1 hit, whereas today they can get into the top 5 with 17,000 sales.

For the record I offered BBC TV my promotions, both on a live and delayed basis. As an act of good faith I sold them Calzaghe v Woodall for £1. I met with Greg Dyke, Peter Salmon and Mike Lewis when I was out of contract with Sky and offered a package of fights including Calzaghe, Hatton, Barrera, Harrison and Freitas.

They did not take any of these fights, we did not even discuss money.
Previously I offered other fights to them at a time when Sky were prepared to allow a delayed broadcast, again they were not interested. BBC have been in boxing for a number of years now using various promoters. They had a virtual monopoly on the British heavyweight scene, yet Danny Williams did not fight Herbie Hide and Harrison has not fought either of them. If they wanted those fights to happen, they could have made them happen. They could have used what Evans calls "clout", but have you criticised them for it, no, if is were Sky you would have been slagging them off.

You state that Skelton v Harrison should be on BBC. But such is BBC's respect for the sport that it's now scheduled in the insomniac's slot, midnight or later. When Greg Dyke was at ITV boxing went out between 9 and 9.30. Obviously he thinks what they have now does not deserve primetime - he's probably right.

Evans goes onto talk about the gravitas of Howard Eastman. But if Howard walked down the street who would know him? No-one and what about the standard of his last six opponents.

Robin Reid made his debut on ITV, subsequently fought on Sky and has been with the BBC since 2000 and having had eleven fights for them - is he a household name bigger then Calzaghe? - No.

More importantly it is only on one or two occasions that the BBC promoters have managed to stage fights in venues with more than 1,500 people in attendance during the time that these promoters have had contracts with the BBC. Most of the promotions take place in venues such as York Hall. With this big BBC broadcasting platform you say they have why aren't the public buying tickets for these promotions and why aren't the BBC fighters in big fights. Whereas we are regularly drawing crowds, the biggest I have had since I have been in boxing and it's on a regular basis up and down the country.

If Evans states Froch and Haye are stealing the march on their rivals then why isn't this reflected in their tickets sales? No it is not the case, just wishful thinking on behalf of the writer. You talk about BBC household names. Is Audley Harrison a household name for the right reasons, I think not.

You state that it is three years since Sports Network promoted a real World Title fight. Was Beyer v Catley for the WBC belt in 2000 bigger than Calzaghe v Sheika, Mitchell, Woodhall or Brewer or the unfortunate Paul Ingle v Botile, Simon v Alexander, Chacon v Polo, Hatton v Magee, Sanchez v Guzman, Chacon v Harrison, Harrison v McCullough and Harrison v Medina. Weren't they and others decent fights? Read some of your reports on them - oh sorry they were not on the BBC.

Evans stated that Damien Kelly was in a "real world title fight". For the record, it was his first fight in 16 months, a mismatch against Irene Pacheco in Columbia. What a great career decision or do you as a so called boxing writer think that it was a smart move for Kelly or the BBC?

Just how many IBF, WBC, WBA and WBO fights have the BBC broadcast and what about the number of WBF, IBC and IBO promotions that they have televised - why haven't Evans or you as the Editor ever criticised them?

He states that he can't imagine Hatton or Calzaghe having a "fly on the wall family show". On this I agree. Joe and Ricky are nothing like Chris Eubank who is an exhibitionist and will do anything for publicity. However, Joe and Ricky have both had documentaries screened by Sky TV and the BBC have also broadcast a documentary on Joe.

Did the BBC make Danny Williams a household name? When he left to join them in 2001 he was promised a lot of things. He obviously had a lot of sugar blown up his arse but most the promises did not materialise. Other than going to Germany he has never fought on any big shows. Disillusioned Danny has returned to me.

It will be interesting to see what happens when BBC restart broadcasting Match of the Day next August. What will be their attitude to British boxing then? Evans again shows his ignorance of how boxing finances work by talking about "guaranteed income from pay-per-view".

Please explain how you can get guaranteed income from pay-per-view. When a pay-per-view fight is broadcast no-one knows what the returns will be or if it will be a success, if the public don't buy it you lose. There are not any guarantees. As well as making money on pay-per-view I have also staged pay-per-view shows that have lost money. Look at Don King's recent eight fight pay-per-view show in Atlantic City he lost money.

He also talks about the huge income that Sky gets from subscribers but is he aware that the BBC generates more income from their annual license fees than Sky do from their viewers.

Finally I cannot tell you how insulting I find it when Evans says I could do as I please with Sky which "sometimes means serving muck dressed up as caviar". I believe that on the whole I promote competitive fights. If that was not the case then my promotions would not be so successful, but to call them muck, I wonder what the fighters and their families who have boxed on Sky such as James Murray, Paul Ingle and Spencer Oliver, feel about his statement.

Boxing News has continually demonstrated over the past couple of years that they are biased against Sky in the favour of the BBC.

On numerous occasions I have spoken to you personally asking that when you are publishing such articles you should at least have the courtesy of speaking to me to get a balanced piece but you never do, are you too lazy or do you have another agenda.

You are forever stating boxing is in a decline, but contrary to what you state that is not the case.

You and some your contributors who know nothing about how the sport runs behind the scenes yet regularly tell us how to run our business.

When Harry Mullen was Editor of Boxing News, he was a fair, decent, knowledgeable and respected editor, unfortunately you could never fill his shoes. It would be interesting to know what Boxing News' circulation figures are, I believe that I am right in stating they have regularly fallen since you became Editor.

In fact, I challenge you to produce your circulation figures and I will get my accountant confirm that the attendances of my promotions have increased, let's see who has their finger on the pulse of boxing. In your column you stated "for all I care Warren and Harrison can go back and forth arguing all over Christmas". Well for all I care, I don't particularly want to see you at another one of my promotions. I find your tenure, ignorance and biasness unpalatable and whilst I am not withdrawing your press facilities, you are certainly not welcome.

Yours sincerely,
Frank Warren
Letter courtesy Frank WarrenTV.

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