Ambitious Ed Pereira is hoping to set world records tumbling with the highest-attended live boxing match in history taking place in 2026.
The CEO of I Visit Boxing is set to formally unveil plans for his future in San Francisco today, and admits: “It’s exciting, it's a bit nerve-wracking, as you can imagine, but we’ve got the guys.”
There is speculation about which fighters can attract numbers to usurp the 135,132 present to watch Tony Zale fight Billy Pryor in 1941 in Juneau Park, Milwaukee, but Pereira thinks he can do it.
Pereira is not a promoter in the strictest sense. He is an event organizer.
He worked with Riyadh Season and Sela on the ill-fated Times Square show last May, and tomorrow, with the San Francisco mayor and in front of City Call, he will announce some of his ambitious plans.
Pereira already has a major player in support with YouTube, who will carry the events he puts on. The idea is to do 12 per year, some of them on YouTube pay-per-view.
“So, for us, the vision going forward is to announce that we’re going to create a super big event,” he added. “We’re going to look to aim to break the world record. No one has come anywhere near beating that number. And on July 11th, we’re going to go for the Guinness Book of Records to try and break that. So, we’re going to put a card on in the city centre of San Francisco. We’re going to close quite a huge portion of San Francisco down to create this large-scale event and try and break that 135,132 record. We won't be announcing the fighters tomorrow. They’ll be announced a little bit later on. This is just to announce that the event's happening and who the partners are going to be. That will come a little bit later, but just to say that I'm working with some promoters currently, and it looks really, really good. So, I can't wait to tell everybody who is going to be on that card.”
There has been online speculation that it could be the heavyweight bout between Oleksandr Usyk and Deontay Wilder. Pereira would not confirm.
“I have seen that,” he said. “Look, whoever lands it has got a really good fight on their hands.”
There were lessons learned from the Times Square show but Pereira has not been put off trying to think outside the box.
“Well, first of all, I love stadiums. I love stadium events,” he said. “I've worked stadium events all my life, mainly rugby and football [soccer], and stadiums can be special, right? “And it's not to say that we won't be announcing any stadium shows ourselves. We will be. I think that's fair to say that over the course of the next few months we'll be doing a few stadium shows. But I think there's something special when you create an I was there moment. And sometimes a lot of that has to do with the card. In fact, a huge amount of that has to do with the card. But we want the fan to be part of the show. We want the fans to be part of the show. And I think one of the key things that we are talking about, particularly in San Francisco, is that the fans themselves, if we break the world record, the fans themselves will be record holders. It's part of their show. You can't break records in stadiums or records of this size. You've got to go out and think kind of out of the box.
“Times Square was really hard. It was logistically a really difficult event to put on. But it's what keeps me alive. I enjoy the difficult challenges.”
That show was in league with Ring and Riyadh Season, and Pereira is open to working with them again.
“I'm doing my own thing, but not to say that I won't work with them again,” he said.
“Look, I really enjoyed my time working with both Sela, the Ring guys and Riyadh season as a whole. Look, what His Excellency has done for boxing cannot be matched. He came into boxing and put a great spotlight on the great sport of boxing. Not to say that we won't work with them again, but for the moment, it's just me.
“We're really excited about the scale of what we're trying to achieve. So as I said, I think some of them will be stadium shows. Some of them will be outdoor shows. All of them, though, will be iconic in one way, shape or form. And you might actually find that there'll be smaller venues or smaller amounts of people. Obviously, I'm not going to do 135,000 people every time. I mean, that would be just mad. But you'll find smaller shows, but there'll always be a link to something iconic, an iconic venue or a link to the past or a stadium that is known for some of the greatest fights in boxing history. There will always be an iconic link.”
With many networks pulling back from boxing, what makes Pereira believes now is the time to do record numbers?
“Many, many, many years ago, boxing was the biggest sport in the world,” he added. “Bigger than football [soccer]. Football’s never been the number one sport. Boxing was always the number one sport. Over the period of time, and actually I was doing a little bit of research and looking back in time, the heavyweight champion of the world was known as the king of the world. You could walk in the street. I always say this line, you could go up to a granny in Bolton many, many years ago and ask her who the heavyweight champion of the world was. And she would tell you exactly the same. If there was a granny walking in New York City, she would tell you. Unfortunately, now they don’t. That doesn't mean that that can’t happen again. And I think if you look at, and I clearly understand the purist’s view with Jake Paul, but if you actually look at the amount of eyeballs that Jake Paul’s getting into the sport, that shows you his potential. Whether you agree with him or you don’t agree with him, the eyeballs are undeniable. And the fact that he’s bringing the sport to a wider audience is undeniable.
“I’m a firm believer that the casual fan, the guy in the pub, drinking a pint, loves the sport of boxing. They just haven’t been shown it yet or they haven't had easy access to it. Football's everywhere. You’ve got easy access to football. Boxing is not the same. And I think that’s the vision. That's the hole that we seek to fill.”
