By Rick Reeno
On July 7th, David Itskowitch resigned as the chief operating officer of Roc Nation Sports.
The move by Itskowitch was unexpected and created rumblings regarding the future of Roc Nation in the boxing business. Itskowitch was hired by Roc Nation Sports in August of 2014. He played a key role in securing free agents Andre Ward and Miguel Cotto to RNS.
Itskowitch, who previously worked for HBO, Lou DiBella and Golden Boy Promotions, gave no reason for his departure and Roc Nation would not address the reasons either.
Michael Yormark, President of Roc Nation Sports, was not concerned with the departure of Itskowitch.
Roc Nation has several dates coming up in the fall, including the return of former four division world champion Miguel Cotto, Andre Ward's return on August 6th against Alexander Brand - and a tentative HBO Pay-Per-View date for November 19th at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas - where Ward would challenge IBF/WBO/WBA light heavyweight king Sergey Kovalev.
Yormark played down any rumors of turbulence in the structure of Roc Nation Sports' boxing division.
"As I said last week, we appreciate the contributions from David. We parted ways and we wish him the very best of luck. As it relates to Roc Nation Boxing, our boxing division wasn’t based on one guy. We’re going to be one of the busiest promoters through the second half of the year," Yormark said.
"We’re really focused on Andre and the big fight on August 6 and what we hope will be an incredible match on November 19 [against Kovalev]. So we’re moving forward. And we’re excited about the future. Again, we wish David all the best. But Roc Nation Sports, Roc Nation Boxing was much bigger than David Itskowitch.”
“We’re going to get through August 6th. We’re going to address what the needs are within our boxing division and then we’ll determine how we replace David, but clearly we have a very busy half of 2016. Were looking forward to it and we'll staff up accordingly."
