From submission to commission: Ex-fighter Andy Foster oversees boxing in California from a unique perspective

The citizens of California may not realize it, but they have a pretty darned cool one-upmanship statement available to them for bragging-rights purposes whenever needed: “The executive director of my state athletic commission could kick the executive director of your state athletic commission’s ass.”

Andy Foster retired as a professional MMA fighter in 2007 with a record of 9-2, which was accompanied by an 8-0 amateur MMA record, a 23-3 amateur boxing record, a 77-4-2 amateur submission wrestling/jiu-jitsu record, and a 1-2 amateur kickboxing record. He was just 28 years old when he retired from fighting, and it was because he was presented with an opportunity to become the executive director of the Georgia Athletic and Entertainment Commission and he couldn’t very well do both.

Four years later, in 2012, a similar job atop the California State Athletic Commission opened up. Foster applied and earned the appointment.

So for the last dozen years, the Golden State has had the most bad-ass athletic commission executive director in the land.

“I initially was reluctant because I had been training for a fight,” Foster, 45, recalled to Boxing Scene of the moment when he was offered the job with the Georgia commission. “It was a whole new world for me. I mean, you’re a kid just trying to do some fights, and suddenly you’re gonna be in charge of the stuff, and you can’t fight anymore. But that’s what I decided to do.”

When Foster speaks, the accent is very much not what you expect to hear out of the mouth of a California-based executive. He’s originally from Dalton, Georgia, in the northwestern part of the state, much closer to Chattanooga, Tennessee, than to metro Atlanta. Fellow Dalton-ite Deborah Norville once described it as “the hillbilly part” of Georgia. Foster’s accent is unmistakable and doesn’t seem to have faded one bit after 12 years on the West Coast; my audio transcription program had no idea what to do with the word “fight” whenever he said it, usually guessing “five,” and when he said “fighters,” it spit out everything from “fibers” to “fodders” to “fathers.”

Foster first started training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu as a teenager in the mid ‘90s — right around the same time, he recalls, that Sen. John McCain dismissively called MMA “human cockfighting.” TV networks were reluctant to jump into bed with UFC and other such leagues, and some states — including Georgia — made the sport illegal. It was during this time that MMA light heavyweight (205 pound-limit) Foster dabbled in amateur boxing. But soon, he and others spearheaded a bill to legalize MMA in Georgia — although it was regulated through sanctioning organizations, not directly by the state.

“At the concurrent time that I was fighting, the state athletic commission in Georgia itself took an interest in regulating mixed martial arts — like, directly regulating as opposed to using these sanctioning organizations,” Foster explained. In addition to fighting, he had promoted a few boxing cards in Georgia. “So I knew the commission and the people there quite well. And I offered to become a referee for mixed martial arts, and I did, I became the head referee for the Georgia Commission. And then, my boss, the commissioner at the time, Kelly Farr, got a promotion, and the secretary of state offered me the job.”

In the summer of 2012, George Dodd resigned as executive director of the California State Athletic Commission while facing heat for running up a substantial budget deficit. And in came the hotshot young commissioner from Georgia to fill the vacancy.

“To me, California is the major commission,” Foster said, indicating that it was a no-brainer to move 3,000 miles away from home when he was offered the gig. “There’s more activity here than anywhere else. And, I had taken some fighters out to California as a promoter some years earlier, and I was so impressed with the way the California commission ran.”

So now California has as its executive director not only an ex-fighter, but someone who has refereed fights, promoted combat sports events, and even worked as a matchmaker and a trainer.

And Foster believes this background helps him in his job directing the commission in a variety of ways.

“I think I can see certain things about the athletes — once you look at them, you kind of know where they’re at and the scheme of their abilities,” he said. “So probably one of the biggest advantages that gives me is being able to assess the matchmaking. Like, can this person win rounds, or can they make it to the end, or, are they just being used as a B-side opponent? The trick we have in boxing, is when fighters are coming up — I’m not talking about the world championship spots, I’m talking about the beginning fights — is how much are we gonna let that B side take before we call it? How much are we gonna let the B side get beat up? And, that’s not the most eloquent way to put it, but it’s about the best way that I know how to put it.

“I feel like the matchmaking is where I can really see things. And me being in the gym as much as I am — I still train regularly — that helps. Plus, having been a referee, I think that that helps with watching over the officiating.”

Foster is in frequent contact with his refs, as he likes them to have as complete a picture as possible of the fighters whose bouts they’re going to be working. Occasionally that’s via phone call, when he has a particularly important issue to discuss.

But most of the time, the communication comes in the form of sharing the notes Foster assembles for every fight card. He puts together information on each combatant, including their record, age, BSI (Boxer Severity Index), win probabilities, and stoppage-loss probabilities.

Foster highlights certain information, such as if a fighter has been stopped in their last couple of bouts or if they had an extensive high-level amateur background. He also emphasizes where their record was built.

“You don’t know what you’re getting out of some places,” he said. “I think you would probably agree, typically, if you’re coming out of the Midwest, that level of competition is not as tough as in Southern California.”

He compiles his notes, then distributes them to the referees and the ringside physician either the day before the weigh-in or the day of the weigh-in.

“I used to send it out a week ahead of time, but then you’d usually end up having to send it again. It’s better to wait until you’ve got a solid card before you send it. But, I do that each and every fight card, and I train my referees to understand what they’re looking at.”

Foster clearly prides himself on the California State Athletic Commission being one that takes fighter safety and the integrity of the competition as seriously as any regulatory body in the country.

And while he is very deliberate about not commenting on what any other commission does, and is not about to opine publicly on whether the commission in Texas was right or wrong to sanction the high-profile Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight earlier this month, Foster did share revealing background information on how his commission approached the Tyson-Roy Jones bout when that landed in his state in 2020. 

“Context is important for understanding every decision we make,” he said. “Mike Tyson hadn’t boxed in a really, really long time when they came to me with this. We were in the middle of the pandemic. And I got on Zoom with Roy and with Mike, and my chairman was on there. And I essentially said, ‘Listen, guys, if you guys want to move around in an exhibition, if you think the public’s interested in seeing you guys work and spar, you go ahead. I just don’t want you guys trying to kill each other. And the commission won’t score it. If you guys want to do an exhibition, and you think somebody will want to watch it, we’ll sanction that. I’m not gonna sanction a real bout, though — if you guys want to do that, there’s other places that probably would do it, but not the state of California.’

“It was important for me for everybody to understand that the commission itself was not scoring this fight, and if you gamble on this thing, that’s up to you. I was concerned about the gambling lines because consumer protection is a big deal — it’s important to protect the consumers.”

Foster described Tyson and Jones as two of his “childhood heroes,” and let out a laugh as he recalled growing up playing Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out.

For most commissioners, knocking out Glass Joe in a video game is about as close as they get to the real thing.

Not so with Andy Foster. He doesn’t just talk the talk. He also fought the fights.

This is Part 1 of a two-part series. Part 2, highlighting Foster’s perspective on several of the most controversial issues in boxing, will run Thursday.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, Ringside Seat, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X or LinkedIn, or via email at [email protected].