Middendorf on Bringing More Boxing to D.C., Baltimore

by David P. Greisman

Chris Middendorf has worked inside the sweet science for 25 years and has been a fixture in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C., area, among other places, for his involvement with local shows, including the series of Ballroom Boxing shows that garnered acclaim.

The longtime matchmaker has started his own promotional venture, United Boxers, which is putting on a show this Saturday, Feb. 25, with plans for more in the next couple of months.

With so much of the conversation about the boxing business being about cultivating local markets and local stars as a way of growing fan bases and growing the sport, BoxingScene.com spoke with Middendorf about the possibility of doing this in an area that seems ripe for reaping rewards — as of 2000, the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area was the fourth largest in the country.

BoxingScene.com: You had previously worked doing the Ballroom Boxing shows and other shows in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., area. What are you trying to do with these upcoming shows? Are these purely local cards, or are you trying to build stars that will go on to a higher level?

Middendorf: “Basically what those shows did is we had local guys, and then I brought in whomever I wanted to, for the most part, and was able to put on some really terrific guys. I looked back at one card recently. I had the Dirrells, Roman Martinez, Chazz Witherspoon and some local guys, including Lamont Peterson.

“A lot of it is putting the best local fighters in the context of other fighters with great ability from different parts of the country. Because with my new company, I’m going to work with the best fighters in this area and am also going to work with other fighters from around the country, bringing them in to fight, or a couple of them have moved here.

“If you're going to do a six- or seven- or eight-bout local card and you have two, three or four really top local guys on the top of the card, you end up getting to the bottom of the card and maybe the quality isn't there. I like to put on shows that I like to go to. I want to go and I want to see the best young local guy fight, and if I can also bring in Jerren Cochran or Akim Ellis and put them in the show.

“They're going to be four 4-round fights. You see a couple of top prospects from wherever, and you see a couple of the best four-round guys from here, and you see James Stevenson on top and Emanuel Taylor. You just see quality. I guess that's the most important thing.

“The problem is most of the local shows, you need to sell tickets. Everybody wants to sell tickets. It can become something you can be dependent upon. You add in more guys that are just going to add ticket sales to the event — not that we don't want ticket sales, but I sort of feel like if you keep putting on quality fighters, people are going to recognize the quality there, expect it and come to see it.

“The audiences here in Baltimore and in D.C. are very knowledgeable boxing audiences, just because the amateur programs have been so good. They want to see that level of talent. And also, I want to be developing the guys. On the March show, we'll have at least two title fights [USBO] …

“They won't be in the war of wars. They'll be in quality fights for legitimate titles with the point being to develop the guys here who are the best talents to the point where they can start to get ranked nationally, where they win North American titles and can get into the rankings and defend those titles here and attract television here to watch those fights.”

BoxingScene.com: Baltimore and Washington, D.C., seem like an area that should have more big-time boxing than there has been. Why hasn’t there been?

Middendorf: “There's never been a strong regionally based promoter here. All the best talent has ended up going on the road to fight. You don't have situations where they're defending their titles, except for Lamont Peterson — Lamont Peterson was the opponent. Hopefully he'll come back to D.C. and defend his title here, which would be a wonderful thing, or maybe he'll go Staples Center and fight Amir Khan out there. [Note: This interview was conducted prior to the news of Peterson-Khan 2 going to Las Vegas]”

BoxingScene.com: What’s the likelihood of changing that, then?

Middendorf: “I think there's a good possibility. One, you’ve got an educated audience. Two, you’ve got an audience that's very diverse, and it's got money and is willing to spend it on fights, probably moreso in Baltimore at the club show level than in D.C. at the club show level.

“We're going to have some casinos here pretty soon, and I think that having the one in [Anne Arundel County, near both D.C. and Baltimore] open up is going to be a boon to the area. If one ends up at [a raceway in Prince George’s County, near D.C.], that's going to help. I'd love for Lamont Peterson to come back and defend his title here.

“What that does is really stimulates the market. It gets everybody recognizing that there's a viable champion here. It just stimulates the whole, from top to bottom, people getting interested in four-round fighters who have quality.”

BoxingScene.com: The area has had plenty of fighters go on to success, including Hasim Rahman getting the heavyweight championship, Mark “Too Sharp” Johnson putting forth his acclaimed career, among others. But they weren’t really local stars, per se.

Middendorf: “They weren't. Mark Johnson had to go to the West Coast to become a champion. Sharmba Mitchell fought a little bit. Joppy and Keith Holmes fought here a little bit, but basically they were with Don King and on the road. There was never much promotion of them locally. King did a couple of shows here that were quite popular shows. For him, when he was in the process of building those guys and they were world champions, he was doing a show a month for Showtime, getting money from them, going to where he had casino money or knew he had a good enough gate, and he did a beautiful job at that. So there wasn't anybody here who was promoting them.

“For a while, we had Joppy and Holmes and Derrell Coley and Sharmba Mitchell and ‘Chop Chop’ Corley was kind of the last one of that group, and then there was sort of a lull, and that was sort of the ebb and flow of talent. Now I think you go around to the gyms, there's a lot of talent here, in D.C. and in Maryland. We'll start to see after February when the final Olympic trials are done some of the guys around here start to turn pro. There's great talent there. Maybe some will come back with success in the Olympics.”

BoxingScene.com: There have been some local draws in the region, even though they weren’t on the level of Rahman, Mitchell, Johnson and all the others: Fernando Guerrero, Jimmy Lange and Mark Tucker.

Middendorf: “My whole thing with my previous company, TKO, was ‘hometown heroes.’ Fernando Guerrero clearly, hands down, was the biggest of those three. And it was a shame that they weren't matching him up too well in putting him in with Grady Brewer.

“Be that as it may, there are the audiences here, and it's a matter of just promoting the best fighters who have the abilities — Fernando Guerrero, after his fight, after everything was all said and done, every fighter was paid, everybody had gone home, there was Fernando in the lobby signing posters and T-shirts and fliers. It takes a special kid for it to be possible to promote to that sort of level.

“I think there are some kids around here who can get a lot of success, and when they get a lot of success and they're promoted right, they'll be popular kids. I don’t have anybody right on the tip of my tongue who has the potential to do what Fernando did in getting 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 people in Wicomico Civic Center, but maybe we'll get somebody coming back from the Olympics who'll do that.

“Seth Mitchell, as a club fighter, before he went with Golden Boy, he was selling 75 or 100 or 150 tickets. Now I think he comes back, and he can drive a show here. People are going to want to come out and see him, as with Lamont. And I'm working with Prize Fight to put Anthony Peterson on a pay-per-view show in March. He goes out of town a couple of times and comes back here, he should be able to drive a show. The market in boxing is coming back in a fairly healthy way right now, hopefully.”

BoxingScene.com: The success of Amir Khan vs. Lamont Peterson had to be heartening.

Middendorf: “It was tremendous, particularly since the last time Amir and Lamont had fought here together, I did an ESPN show for them at the Armory, and there were probably 1,200 people there [Note: The announced attendance that night was 3,876, for whatever that figure is worth].

“And so the combination of HBO and the world title fight and Amir Khan, I think Amir Khan sold a lot of tickets for that show, and brought a real cross-section of an audience in there. And I think D.C. finally paid attention to the Peterson brothers' story. It crossed over from just sort of the fourth-page boxing story in the sports section into being two or three front-page stories and all the coverage on the Internet. That's a very appealing story.

“I think the situation is if you're not a boxing fan and you've heard all the UFC hype and maybe you've seen some UFC fights and maybe haven't seen that many good recent boxing fights and lived through all the bad TV fights taking place for a long time, and you come out for Lamont Peterson vs. Amir Khan and see the type of fights you will see at club shows around here, people will go, ‘Hey, I didn’t realize it was so much fun to sit ringside and watch the fight.’ ”

BoxingScene.com: And I’m sure you’re hoping for that.

Middendorf: “So much of it is putting it together. If you put on the quality fights, and you promote it reasonably well, and you continue to do it, then the problem with most promotional companies around here — and I worked for many of the ones that got six or seven shows done and were just at the point where it was starting to work — and they just ran out of money or lost the fighter who was driving the show, and they weren't able to sustain it.

“That's really what it's about, is sustaining it and building it. On the way, you develop a few sponsors, and that's what you need. You need a regular mailing list of people who know you’re going to put on quality fights every month or every other month. It's not that it's easy. You have to be prepared to lose a certain amount of money to get there. We're not an area that is so economically challenged or doesn't have a history of boxing.

“There's a build-in audience here. You have to deliver it to them — quality fights and a good show.”

David P. Greisman is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Follow David on Twitter at twitter.com/fightingwords2 or on Facebook at facebook.com/fightingwordsboxing, or send questions and comments to fightingwords1@gmail.com