From matchmaker to promoter to network executive to advisor to Roy Jones Jr., it's unlikely you'll find anyone with a more diversified background in boxing than Brad Jacobs. For twelve years he was the man in charge of the very successful USA Network's Tuesday Night Fights series.
Today Jacobs is the key advisor for WBC light heavyweight champion Roy Jones Jr. He is also the CEO of Global Productions, a special events/television production company that specializes in boxing. Fightnews recently visited Brad at his Miami headquarters to discuss the fight game, his efforts to develop a new weekly televised boxing series and his relationship with Roy Jones.
How did you first get involved in boxing?
When I went University of South Florida in Tampa, I worked for the basketball team there. I was a manager/student assistant coach. There was a sports writer named Ken Rosenberg, who covered for the team for the Tampa Tribune and we became very friendly. I left school and the team and I went to California where my family was living in San Francisco. I went to worked to for a major indoor soccer league team named the San Francisco Fog as a director of sales -- I was the youngest sports professional in the country at the time. I was 21 working for them, and Ken called me and said he had gone to work for a gentleman named Phil Alessi, who was a boxing promoter in Tampa and I had a desire to go back to Tampa.
He said 'come and down and work for us' and I really knew nothing about boxing. Just like anybody I watched the big fights. So I went back and kind of was a 'jack-of-all-trades' working with them. After about six or eight months in being there, Ken who I think was 31 at the time, contracted leukemia and within eight or nine months he had died. Everything he was doing, which was matchmaking to placing the shows at casinos and whatever, fell on my shoulders and I kind of just had a trial by fire. I got along pretty good doing it and enjoyed it.
We were doing a lot of shows at that time for USA Network and I had devised a plan for USA that I thought they could spend their money overall in the business more wisely than they were. I presented it to them and they said 'Hey we like that idea, come on board and we'll create this show.' They were doing boxing based out of Los Angeles at that time for the most part doing some sporadic stuff with us and Duva and some other people. I went to work for USA Network and what eventually became Tuesday Night Fights -- it was Wednesday Night and Thursday Night and Friday Night Fights -- and the plan there simply was to buy the best fight possible for the least money that we could spend and try to create a following which we did, mixing names and just good fights and had a very successful run.
How long did Tuesday Night Fights last?
From the first fight being on the network to the last fight it was seventeen years.
Were you with them the whole way?
I was involved in different aspects the whole way. At one time I working with Alessi Promotions, kind of on the promotional side, but for the last I think it was twelve years, I was working directly for the network and was their Senior Programming Consultant for boxing and handled every Tuesday in a different city for an average about 42, 43 weeks a year for all those years.
Some people say that boxing started going downhill after the demise of the USA fights.
Yeah. A couple things about Tuesday Night Fights... One was it was appointment viewing. You knew when and where it was, you didn't have to search for it, you didn't have to guess. It was Tuesday nights at nine o'clock, come hell or high water. That really was an advantage for us. You're also talking about two ten- or twelve-round fights, nationally televised, and in our business, that's a very important thing. When you take that out of an equation, it really hurts the business, for sure.
Has there ever been an attempt to revive it?
It's funny you say that. I actually had a deal put together at the time with USSB, which is now like Direct TV, that the Tuesday following the end of "USA Tuesday Night Fights" was going to be "USSB Tuesday Night Fights." The next week we were going to pick up, but at the very last moment USSB backed out, and we didn't have a home for it.
So yes, the answer is basically ever since in one form or another, either I myself have been trying to create another weekly event or people have contacted me to try to be part of going to a network creating another weekly event. It's vital to our business that we have it. It really is.
What's your take on the ESPN situation?
I think that it's very difficult for them to try to maintain quality on a consistent basis and you get what you pay for. At some point, the quality is going to start sloping down. There's no question about it. There's nothing that they can do about it, because whatever they are paying they are also taking money out for lights, hotel rooms and whatever it is, the net end of that money to the promoter is so small and what they demand that you put on the air in quality, the two just don't mix. At some point, either they have to go back to where they were or some mutual level in between or they're just going to get out of the business.
Do you see anybody else ready to step in?
At the moment I don't. There are people that on again off again I've talked to or other people have talked to and it just hasn't happened.
The funny thing is there seems to be a rash of reality based TV shows that have a boxing premise to them are coming around and that may be what injects the networks into understanding boxing and understanding the back stories of the boxers and the teams and those type of people that may get them back into the boxing business, which they were a huge part of obviously the 80s when on any weekend there was a show on NBC, ABC, CBS sometimes in the same city, like Atlantic City, they would have three or four shows in a weekend. Maybe this is what will cause a resurgence, at least I'm hoping.
I've been told advertisers are reluctant to buy advertising on boxing telecasts. Was that ever the situation at USA network?
It's not reluctantcy as much as it's a business. Advertisers for boxing want to get the most bang they can for their buck. The one thing we had in USA, which we already talked about, was consistency. So if it was Meineke or Budweiser or whoever was on board with USA Network at the time, they knew that they could count on a certain rating number and they're comfortable with that rating that they're going to deliver X amount of viewers and advertising, etc. It's very hit-and-miss when you're not in that situation, so I think that's part of the problem with the advertiser.
Also, sometimes boxing is its own worst enemy -- shenanigans and craziness that go on sometimes in the business in a public forum because we're so many independent people. The promoters, the executives and whoever all fighting for their piece of the pie rather than being like it is in the NFL where it's all kind of board room stuff and they all go out with a unified front. Here everybody's bickering and fighting and some people look at it and say, 'I don't need to be a part of that. I can do volleyball and it's going to deliver the same sort of numbers and we'll live with that.' So that's an important thing we have to learn as an industry, to kind of be unified as we possibly can to the benefit of everybody.
What's the latest with the Miami Fight Nights you were promoting?
Right now it's, I'd like to call it on a permanent hiatus. It never said that it's the end of the end but it's American Airlines Arena, we were doing a series for Miami Fight Night, we were highlighting a lot of local athletes. Name people, Jermain Taylor was on the show. Guys like that. We also had fighters from the stable of Roy Jones, who's a Florida-based group on the shows. We were doing fairly well. The concept of the presentation was different from a regular show. Al Bernstein was there and he was guiding the audience through video monitors and audio presentations of what was coming up. It was like you were living inside a television show, a boxing television show. It was pretty neat, but we were drawing like 2500 fans an event and the arena needed 3000 to 3500 to break even and although they had intimated that they were going to be in it for the long haul, I told them from the beginning you got to be in this for years if you're going to hope to gather a consistent crowd like they do at the Palace at Auburn Hills. But after four shows, for financial issues that had nothing to do with boxing, just arena and Miami Heat related and they decided to call it off for the moment. It's a shame because it was building a little momentum and they were entertaining shows.
What are you doing right now?
24/7 my life is Roy Jones Jr. and his related entities. We're heading towards a May 15th fight for Roy with Antonio Tarver, that Don King is going to promote because he won the purse bid for that fight.
Has Roy ever given any indication to you what he’s going to do if he defeats Tarver? Is he thinking of staying at 175 or moving up again?
No he hasn’t said it at all. Obviously there’s always this desire for us to make a Tyson fight. It’s something Roy really wants to do. I know he’s met with Tyson and apparently Tyson really wants to do it, it’s just these other outside influences on Tyson that are preventing it from happening at the moment. That doesn’t preclude Roy going to do that and coming back to light heavyweight because he already proved he could go to heavyweight and come back down. But he hasn’t said one way or the other.
How long do you see Roy staying in the game as a fighter?
That’s a really good question, probably best answered by Roy but I think he takes these things one at a time. After the Tarver fight he might say ‘Hey, that could be it,' or 'I want to move on to Tyson. I want three more fights.' That’s a purely Roy Jones decision that only he could make, given what the landscape is out there at the moment.
Are you part of Roy's promotional company Square Ring?
No, I’m like an advisor to Roy. Basically Square Ring is Roy Jones. He’s the only entity to Square Ring. I handle at the moment all the business associated with Square Ring on his behalf.
Do you do matchmaking and all that?
Well, when we do an event we hire Jim Waldrop who is a long time associate of Roy’s as a matchmaker. As we do an event we bring all of our independent contractors together that we rely on and put on a show and we all kind of come together.
What’s your opinion of the state of the sport right now?
It’s a really trying and difficult time. Mostly we go back to the subject we we talked about, the lack of a consistent weekly boxing show that people can rely on and know is going to be there. I’ve had the discussion with HBO and other people about at some point the well is going to dry up of future pay-per-view stars. Collectively as a business we have to figure out a way to kind of start that farm system -- the ESPN, USA Network-type shows that kind of funnel up through the HBOs and Showtimes and then on to pay-per-view. You just can’t ask people to pay to see a pay-per-view star if they have no association, no long time relationship with a fighter and follow him on a wide basis. Obviously the basic cable networks are reaching 80 and 90 million homes and that’s the exposure you need to get for these guys, otherwise the gross number of people that know them is less than would support on going financial support by pay-per-view.
Where do you see boxing five years from now?
That’s a good question. I think internet based viewership definitely will be a significant part of boxing. All the reporting and rumor and following of the business is so dominated by the internet that I think that it’s so a natural progression that people will be able to see fights on the internet. How that works itself out financially is yet to be seen, but that’ll be a big part of it. I have no doubt that the HBOs and Showtimes will still be doing what they’re doing and I'm just very unclear about what’s going to happen to the other level of the business. I feel strongly that somehow someone, some group, some network is going to step up to the plate and recognize that there is a loyal core audience that will follow this and just give them the opportunity to come. That will happen. Where, when or how I don’t have any answers.
How do you want to be remembered?
I hope they look back and say he was a good guy and a fair guy and he did his best to help the business. At the end of the day, I just want to give everybody their fair shake, deal fairly and squarely with everybody -- which I have a terrific track record of doing. I just hope people look back at what I’ve done at USA Network, what I do with Roy Jones, whatever it is, I want them to say 'yeah, he did his best to help the business and he helped a lot of people.'
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