Ben Shalom’s management of purse bids – or mismanagement, depending on your point of view – has taught him some valuable lessons since he started mixing with boxing’s most influential.
The broadcast deal he secured with the mighty Sky Sports for his promotional company Boxxer raised some eyebrows in 2021 and came just four years after he secured his promoter’s license with the British Boxing Board of Control at the age of 23.
Though he never claimed nor wanted to be the next Eddie Hearn, comparisons with the Matchroom boss inevitably followed when Shalom essentially stepped into his shoes at Sky.
In an early interview with Boxing News, Shalom spoke of his desire to get fellow promoters on side, to work with them for the benefit of the sport and its fans. The intention was honorable, yet the fruition seemed fanciful and the hostile nature of his new surroundings – dominated by Matchroom and Queensberry – soon became apparent.
Hearn rarely wasted a chance to take shots at Shalom when fighters signed to Boxxer were pulled from purse bids – most famously Frazer Clarke when he was initially due to challenge Fabio Wardley – and Hearn’s influence on social media, alongside Shalom’s preference to do his talking in private, led to only one side of the story ever being told.
Today, Shalom hopes the worst of the mudslinging is over and, simply by refusing to buckle under pressure, he is starting to earn the respect of his promotional rivals. After all, they’ve all been there themselves: Frank Warren had to break the significant “cartel” stranglehold on British boxing in the early 1980s, then battled with new kid on the block Barry Hearn later in that decade – and didn’t exactly embrace Hearn’s arrival 20 years later.
However, the wall between the Hearns and the Warrens has all but disappeared thanks to the highly lucrative influence of Saudi Arabia. In fact, Eddie and Frank have turned into such a prolific double act, Shalom has been left alone to build his own empire in peace.
“You’ve got to have a thick skin,” Shalom told BoxingScene. “You get respect from staying around, and obviously we’ve been here a while now and it is getting easier. I think the Saudi influence has actually helped, because they’re demanding that everyone works together, which has been helpful in the short term.
“It was never going to be easy to break into an industry that was essentially run by the same two families [Hearn and Warren] for so many decades, but we’ve broken down a lot of barriers and a lot of hurdles to get here. As the business gets bigger, things get easier in terms of competitors, and hopefully they become people we can just make fights with.”
Shalom has been described as aloof, yet his preference to remain in the background is admirable in many ways. So, too, is his restraint when his rivals were so hellbent on controlling the narrative in public.
It must have been a difficult time. Particularly when unfounded whispers of his impending sacking from Sky Sports started to gather volume from the mouths of his detractors. Today, like always, Shalom is focused purely on his own business and he’s rightly proud of the talented (and, crucially, young) roster that he has built from scratch.
“Since I got my promoter’s license, I was told that I’d be done within six months and it’s been like that the whole way through,” Shalom said of the incessant doom-mongering. “Our stable has got to a point now where we feel like we’ve got the most exciting group of young fighters in the country, both female and men’s.”
Shalom has recently added some experience to the squad, too – in the shape of one of the most marketable and cocksure boxers in Europe.
“Even to be able to attract someone like [Chris] Eubank Jr. is a milestone for us and it’s testament to how we’ve built the business,” Shalom said. “We’re looking to the Paris Olympics now, collectively with Sky, and people know that Tokyo was really the bedrock for the start of our business with Ben Whittaker, Frazer Clarke, Lauren Price and Caroline Dubois. It was a milestone and remains the bedrock of our current stable, so together [with Sky] we’re looking at the next Olympics with the long-term future in mind. I feel really excited. We’ve never been in a stronger position.”
All that’s left to do, then, is negotiate an impending purse bid. On Aug. 14, at midday, bids for the eagerly awaited rematch between Clarke and Wardley must be presented to the British Boxing Board of Control. In March, after Clarke had banked the extra rounds that Shalom had advised were necessary in 2023, they fought to a rousing draw in one of the fights of the year atop a Boxxer show.
Shalom won’t be pulling anyone out of the bids this time.
“Purse bids are useful and make sense in this situation, particularly when it’s not quite got over the line, but it will definitely happen,” he said with a chuckle.
“That’s a fight [Wardley-Clarke II] that I felt was pretty much done a couple of times. It’s a fight that both of the guys want, it’s their biggest payday, so it definitely will happen. I’m looking forward to it. The first fight was a huge spectacle.”
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