Charlie Sims, and Huge Boxing

By around midnight on Friday, Charlie Sims, once a reality television figure and the son of the respected trainer Tony, will know if his promotional bow was a success.

His Huge Boxing organization, at London’s revered York Hall, will deliver, to DAZN, an eight-fight card featuring both male and female fighters, and with those recognized as from the stables of Queensberry Promotions and Matchroom.

Charlie Sims has used Eddie Hearn’s promotional license to attempt to deliver Friday’s contests – doing so has proved a blessing and a curse – because his interview with the British Boxing Board of Control to secure his own hadn’t been scheduled until after Thursday’s weigh-in. On Wednesday afternoon he was still seeking an opponent for Karol Itauma, the light heavyweight brother of the heavyweight Moses, perhaps the most exciting talent on British shores.

The pursuit of suitable opponents, and often the necessity for that pursuit to take until the eve of the relevant promotions, is something with which both the most influential of promoters and their lower-key contemporaries will be familiar. So, too, will be the perverse perceived appeal of delivering and promoting fights.

Those who enter promotion rarely do so strictly out of necessity. Some who have appeared to – like Dave Coldwell, Hayemaker and Cyclone in the British fight scene’s modern era – have soon abandoned their ambitions because of the near-endless difficulties they have encountered. 

Sims may soon join them. But he is entering more fertile territory than were many of his predecessors. DAZN’s willingness to broadcast so many lower-key fights – regardless of the reality that they often don’t pay to do so – can help Huge Boxing’s profile as much as it can potentially enhance the experience of those who pay to be present on fight night. It is also tempting to conclude that a promoter with the right relationships with Matchroom and Queensberry – the Essex-based Sims has long been visible at Matchroom’s promotions – can benefit by offering activity to some of their lower-profile fighters while the riches of the Saudi Arabian expansion continue to distract.

It is because of Tony Sims’ close links with Matchroom and Hearn that Charlie Sims has so often been visible. Tony Sims, previously, entered and abandoned promotion. He regardless persisted with and made a success of training – most notably in guiding Darren Barker to a middleweight world title and Anthony Joshua the heavyweight title of the IBF – and he revealed that watching his son attempt to enter the same often-thankless profession has, at different times, given him a heavy heart. 

“I know the difficulties, because I’ve promoted myself, a long time ago,” he told BoxingScene. “Probably 23, 24 years ago. I said that to Charlie before he went into it. It’s a very difficult establishment to get into and be successful at it; very few promoters have earned a living doing this; there’s a lot of promoters out there that ain’t doing any good at this and keep trying to plug away and get something at the end of it. I was one of them a long time ago. 

“I’ve never wanted him to be involved in boxing. When he was younger, 11 years old, he joined the Repton and boxed amateur. I remember he had two fights, and I remember being in the car for his third fight, and he said to me, ‘I don’t really want to do boxing’. ‘Why are you doing it then?’ ‘I was just doing it for you.’ ‘But I don’t actually want you to do it – just because I did it…’ He’s obviously got a passion for the sport. He’s boxed; he’s managed; he’s lived in America and set the Matchroom gym up in America, so he’s been around boxing his whole life. All I can do is help with my experience, but Charlie’s his own man and does everything his own way, and I just let him do that. He’s chose to do this, so hopefully he’ll be successful.

“It’s very difficult to break through, but looking at his first show – getting DAZN to show his first show, at the iconic York Hall, putting the card together with Matchroom and Queensberry fighters… He’s expecting a sellout on the night for his first-ever show. He’s done quite a lot in a short space of time – he only started putting this together five or six weeks ago, so it’s been quite difficult.”

Charlie Sims had been living in Hollywood, Los Angeles, when he oversaw Matchroom’s overtaking of the Churchill Boxing Gym in Santa Monica. Like Hearn – whose work ethic, for all of his critics, is to be admired given his father Barry’s wealth could have afforded him a considerably easier career – Charlie Sims has resisted the temptation of a kinder path.

He is most widely recognized for his participation in the forgettable-yet-popular reality television series The Only Way Is Essex, which he left behind at perhaps the peak of its popularity, well before his re-emergence as a budding boxing promoter. He had also previously entered more stable professions, and while the Sims’ wealth and influence doesn’t compare to that of the Hearns, the Sims family will know that his new path will not escape scrutiny by those within boxing who will resent his association with Matchroom and his profile outside of their sport, and also those outside of their sport who will be ready to judge him regardless of the extent of his success within it.

“He reminds me of Eddie Hearn a little bit in the way his work ethic is,” Tony Sims continued. “Anybody with that amount of work ethic in them becomes successful in the end. He chose to leave school at 16 and not go into his A Levels because he got a job as a surveyor and he left school straight away – he wanted to work and earn money. That’s the way he’s always been.

“He’s had to borrow Eddie Hearn’s licence, which has actually made it 10 times more difficult to match fighters from abroad, because they think it’s Eddie Hearn’s show and they want more money. It’s a really difficult period to do this in. But once he gets his licence, he’s off and running.

“Charlie’s a very smart young man. He can handle weight on his shoulders. He was a junior stockbroker at 19 years of age, and he can deal with pressure; he can deal with numbers; he’s very smart. He’ll ask me questions – advice – because I’ve been in the sport a long time, but he’s very much done the show with his own staff around him, and they’ve worked extremely hard to put this show together.

“I’m not nervous. I want him to succeed, like anything he does in life, but I’m excited and looking forward to the night, actually. 

“He’s been involved in TV shows – he knows that side of that – he’s a very ambitious young man. Hopefully it’ll be a successful night.”

It is little secret that Tony Sims’ longevity in boxing owes partly to his loyalty to first Hennessy Promotions – Mick Hennessy’s promotional ventures have gradually disappeared, despite his success in once being a rival to Matchroom and Frank Warren – and since then to Matchroom. To what extent that remains a reflection of astute judgement perhaps only he knows, but had Matchroom not had the success they gradually did with Barker, Joshua, John Ryder, Joe Cordina and others he has guided, his loyalty may have come at a considerable cost.  

Asked if he advised his son to follow a similar path, even in an era when Hearn and Warren at least claim to be cordial, Sims responded: “Me, Barry Hearn, Frank Warren – we’re all the old guys in the sport, really. The youth of Eddie Hearn, George Warren, my son Charlie – they’re the youth. They’re different people; different setups. They’re all very smart individuals as well. They’re diplomatic. It’s a different era. We’re like the old school and this is the young school coming through. 

“They’ve all got to do what they want to do and I would never advise against doing that. Sometimes you make decisions in life that you look back on and think, ‘I wish I’d never said that; I wish I’d never done that.’ But the youth of today seem more smart than we was back in the day. Charlie’s got relationships with Eddie Hearn and Frank Smith, and he’s met up with George Warren, and they’ve got on well together as well.”

Among the eight fights scheduled for Friday evening, George Liddard confronts Omar Nguale Ilunga at middleweight, where Jimmy Sains has been matched with Ruben Angulo. There is also a fight at flyweight between Maisey Rose Courtney and Klaudia Ferenczi, and at super flyweight between Shannon Ryan and Kate Radomska.