The Call to the Hall Fred Sternburg

From steak houses to slug fests and everything in between, he has represented them all.

The latest addition of inductees into the International Boxing Hall of Fame includes promotional legend Fred Sternburg. 

To say his experience at the top level of sports and entertainment is vast and varied would be an understatement as big as his client list. 

For over 35 years, Sternburg, the president of his own Sternburg Communications, Inc. since 2002, has represented a list of people that have included EPIX Sports, award-winning documentarians Aviva Kempner and Eric Drath, humorist Mark Russell, legendary sports columnist and author Jerry Izenberg, Ruth’s Chris Steak House, PGA Tour, Senior PGA Tour and LPGA Tour events and ATP and Virginia Slims tennis tournaments, PPV.COM, to name but a few. And, working alongside some of boxing’s biggest fighters on boxing’s biggest promotions. 

In boxing, Sternburg has built a great reputation on his impressive resume. And, people like to be around him. With his ever-present smile and infectious laugh, he is one of the nicest and friendliest guys you can hope to meet in the sport. 

It has been in boxing where Sternberg has built a who’s-who client list that includes world champion, Hall of Famers like Sugar Ray Leonard, Riddick Bowe, Winky Wright, Gennadiy Golovkin, Manny Pacquiao, Joe Calzaghe, and trainer Freddie Roach, among many others. His resume boasts an endless list of legends in the sport. 

Sternburg, who won the Marvin Kohn "Good Guy" Award from the Boxing Writers Association of America in May 2005, caught up with MaxBoxing to give his thoughts on his career in a crazy sport like boxing. 

The last time we spoke was in Las Vegas at the Tszyu-Fundora card. Today we are catching up over the phone where he is in Harlem, New York for the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson press conference which took place at the iconic Apollo Theater. It would be impossible to capture this man’s career in one interview, but I did have the chance to catch up with him and chat about a few highlights. 

BT: Hi Fred, thanks for taking a minute to chat.

FS: Hey Bill, happy to do it. 

BT: Well first off congratulations on your son’s recent graduation from law school and passing the bar exam. Last time we spoke he was just getting to take his bar exam. You must be very proud. 

FS: Yes, we are. What a guy, we are very proud of him. 

BT: OK, enough on the kid (laughs) let’s talk about his dad getting into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Pretty special. I’ve got a million things I could ask you about but let’s just touch on a few things. 

FS: You bet, sounds great. 

BT: You finish university, you are out working and one of your first assignments (in boxing) is the “Sugar” Ray Leonard - Marvin Hagler fight. What an event. What an introduction to the sport.

FS: I had been working for Charlie Brotman who ran a preeminent public relations agency in Washington, D.C. One of Charlie’s biggest clients was Ray Leonard and Charlie had been Ray’s publicist since Ray’s amateur days. Charlie assigned me to work with him on the initial press conference announcing Hagler-Leonard. It took place during the evening TV newscasts at the new Hyatt Regency Hotel in Bethesda, Maryland. I didn’t now a whole lot about boxing and the PR work, publicity, and what have you for any type of boxing event much less one of this magnitude. I really didn’t know a lot about the sport besides being a fan. Well, I get to this press gathering, this is before the actual press conference started. It is crazy. I mean the whole media world is there (laughs). CNN, ESPN, all seven TV network affiliates from Washington, D.C. and Baltimore … you name it, they are there, and the seven affiliates and two networks are all doing live interviews with Ray and Marvin for five minutes each before we start the press conference. The attention this fight was going to generate was off the charts. I said to myself, ‘I like this, this is gonna be fun’. The whole world really stopped and watched that fight and its buildup. People were worried Ray was going to get killed in there. He had the eye injury and hadn’t fought in nearly three years. Fighting such a formidable guy in Hagler. The press the world over was all over that fight. It really was an amazing event.

BT: You had (have) a long relationship with Manny Pacquiao and his trainer Freddie Roach.

FS: I met Freddie when he was training Mike Tyson and my client, Gary Shaw, was promoting those fights. I had been doing work for Top Rank and I got connected to Manny Pacquiao, trained by Freddie, through Top Rank. I mean, Bill, Manny really was my Sugar Ray Leonard. The way Manny came up. Just a small guy and not many people, myself included, saw what was coming at the beginning. He built slowly, knocked off some tough fighters to get the belts, and then the media, his country and boxing fans really started to get onboard. I mean for a small guy who didn’t speak English to accomplish what he did was incredible. First off, he won, and he won impressively. He was a fan-friendly fighter, and he came across as so humble and gracious. All he wanted to do was bring glory to his country, the Philippines, and the Philippines got behind him because of it. And, don’t forget how hard he worked at speaking English. He made that a priority and that opened a lot of doors for press and fans when he started to speak English. They embraced him because of it. But, it all comes down to winning in the ring and he won a lot and impressively. At his height he was covered by every news outlet in the world. After the De La Hoya win it was Manny mania. He was humble, dedicated to his country, he was just so huge.  He was on the cover of TIME magazine, featured on 60 MinutesI, and was a favorite guest of Jimmy Kimmel Live.  So, when Manny was getting mobbed in the ring after a fight, often I’d slide over to Freddie and get his thoughts which were often a gave me a unique angle and insight into the fight and Manny’s performance. Freddie and I shared the same sense of humor and became close friends, not just from that, but from the time I spent in Manny’s training camps at Freddie’s Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood, California.

BT: Is the texting and posting and tweeting by fighters themselves, never mind publicity outfits, good or bad for the fighter? Is it too much? Everyone, or lots of people, live their life in real time on social media. Are you controlling the fighters at times as much as the story? 

FS: Well, it certainly is a way to sell a fight and raise profiles. You can get a lot of information out there today. I think there is literally an addiction problem with people and smart phones as they are literally, as I say, addicted to them. It is a bit of a double edge sword as fighters can be live and interactive with everyone, but it can cause difficulties if the content being put out isn’t what you want. It certainly can be challenging to control that narrative now but how do you argue with someone with 2 million followers (laughs).  

BT: You have a few other clients, but you are primarily doing boxing now. Did you find boxing or did boxing find you? Once you got into it, was it word-of-mouth? 

FS: Ha, that’s interesting. Well, it all starts with one relationship or connection that leads to another. In the beginning, while I was still working for Charlie Brotman, who taught me so much about the value of public relations, the right way to do the job, and how to develop relationships with the media and clients, I was assigned the account of Barry Linde, a successful Washington, D.C.-based builder and developer who had started managing two very talented, undefeated fighters -- junior welterweight Reggie "Showtime" Green and welterweight Derrell "Too Sweet" Coley. Thanks to Barry, both fighters became TV regulars on "USA Tuesday Night Fights,"  USA Network’s very popular prime time live boxing series run by Hall of Famer Brad Jacobs, who I would later work with at Top Rank.  It was a great platform for fighters and Reggie and Derrell had some success, leading them to world title shots. We did two local fights with Riddick Bowe, we worked with Dan Goossen at ‘America Presents’. We did fights on Fox Sports Net, HBO, Showtime, did press conferences for Bob Arum when he wanted to make D.C. a stop on a media tour for a big fight, lots of shows and lots of connections. You get to meet people, they like the work you do, and it often goes from there. I started to become known as the ’throwback publicist’ known for a creative bent in my work that had the flavour of a bygone era.

BT: Except for fight week where the media descends on a city, there aren’t a lot of remotes from camps it seems. I loved the bigger fights because they would have remotes from camps, and you did a fair bit of that. 

FS: For some of the bigger events and bigger fighters, yes. I had a busy run with Manny Pacquiao. It really depended on Bob (Arum) to approve these camp visits but I went more and more as Manny got bigger and bigger, and I give Bob a lot of credit for investing in me to produce training camp stories to help build up Manny’s fights. I’d spend a work week in camp and go home on weekends. I’d be out there during the (work) week for a month before the fight. You can try to line up all the zoom calls and in-camp interviews you want but you need someone there to organize the press and stay on top of the camps to meet their media obligations. The media requests for Manny were endless at that time. 

BT: I have a feeling that you are going to say it is impossible to choose. But, greatest memory or favourite person or people to work with? 

FS: (Laughs). Well, Bill, you are correct. It is hard to choose just one memory as I have had, and am having, a career of memories. I will say I have great, fond memories of working with Gary Shaw from years ago. We started our businesses at the same time.  He hired me to do P.R. and we jumped into some great promotions together and we had a lot of fun, a lot of great times working with different fighters. Lots of good memories of working with Gary. Winky Wright, Shane Mosley, Diego Corrales, so many great fighters over the years.  We embraced our roles as underdogs. And, I must say Bob Arum is without a doubt the greatest promoter ever. I mean his promotion of Oscar (De La Hoya) alone, from Olympic gold medalist to the face of boxing and a major crossover star, could be a case study for MBA candidates. A quick story about Bob. I used to fax him articles and promotional ideas and all sorts of things related to boxing to him at his office or to his hotel room when he was on the road. One day in June 2008, I added an extra page to the articles I was faxing him -- it said, “The Curse of the Billy Goat.” Within seconds after it goes through the fax I get a call from Bob, who said, “I don’t know what it is but I’m all for it!” (laughs). We were getting ready to do a Los Angeles press conference for Manny Pacquiao’s challenge of Chicago native and WBC lightweight champion David Diaz. It was Manny’s first fight at lightweight. Bob goes P.T. Barnum  and presents from Manny’s trainer, Freddie Roach, a live Billy Goat, and not just any Billy Goat, but "a direct descendent of Murphy, the goat that instigated the curse on the Chicago Cubs during the 1945 World Series." Cubs fans, including Diaz, take that curse seriously and Diaz ran for the hills rather than get near it for a photo for fear that the curse would rub off on him. It was great and it was crazy. A.P. ran the photo worldwide, and Bob loved it. He loved inventive ideas and promotions. Greatest promoter ever.

BT: Speaking of great, let’s talk about your recent Hall of Fame announcement. Pretty special. Did you ever dream you’d get to this stage in your career, especially connected to the sport of boxing. Share some thoughts. 

FS: (Laughs). I never, ever thought I’d be working in boxing, let alone something like this. It is overwhelming, it really is. I heard my name was on the ballot for this year and I thought, ‘OK, that is enough, that in itself is rewarding’. Then I heard rumbles about perhaps getting elected. Then one day my phone rings and I see Ed Brophy’s name flash and he usually doesn’t call you to say you didn’t get in (laughs). 

BT: Fred I know you are a light-hearted guy who loves a good laugh but in all seriousness, you have a great reputation industry-wide. You are (obviously) highly respected for the great work you have done over the years for the fighters you have represented and the great work you have done in the sport on many other levels as well.

FS: Thank you, Bill. Those are nice words. I never thought in a million years I’d get an award for having as much fun as I have had (laughs). But, seriously, the recognition is nice; its humbling, I’m honored. It’s a privilege to join boxing legends of all generations in such a special place.  

BT: Fred, I could talk for hours, and I do indeed want to do this again. I’ll see you next month in Vegas for the Tank Davis card and I’ll congratulate you in person. Thanks so much for your time. 

FS: Ah, Bill, you’re too kind. You’re very welcome. Thank you, it was great chatting.