In the history of boxing there have been, notes Joe DeGuardia, four men from Long Island, New York who could call themselves world champions.
Two of them, he proudly points out, cut their teeth with DeGuardia and his company, Star Boxing, at the Paramount Theater in Huntington, an hour or so ride on the Long Island Rail Road from Penn Station in Manhattan. Those two were Chris Algieri and Joe Smith Jnr (the others, for the record, being James “Buddy” McGirt and Jamel Herring) and on February 13, Smith will be returning to the place where he completed his professional pugilistic apprenticeship when he takes on Devonte Williams, 13-1 (6 KOs), in his first outing since dropping a wide decision to Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez in October 2023.
For DeGuardia, it will be a special occasion: the 50th card he has promoted over the last 14 years at a venue that, he says, evokes a spirit that is in danger of slowly being squeezed out of boxing.
“Look, I’ll tell you right off the bat. What I like about doing shows there is it’s authentic. It’s real. It’s boxing. It’s what we are now, in many respects, missing in our sport,” DeGuardia told BoxingScene recently. “And you know, it’s a throwback in so many ways. Most of the time that we go there, we have great fights, and I think the space is conducive to that, because everything’s on top of you.”
DeGuardia’s relationship with the Paramount began in 2011 when he was looking for a home for local boy Algieri. From November of that year through February 2014, Algieri fought and won at the Paramount eight times, running his record to 19-0 (9 KOs) before stepping up to world level, beating Ruslan Provodnikov at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn to capture a 140 pound belt but then running into a Manny Pacquiao-shaped buzzsaw in Macau.
Smith, 28-5 (22 KOs), will be making his fifth appearance at the venue when he takes on Williams, and in many ways he is the perfect person to headline a card at the Paramount, a throwback arena featuring a throwback fighter who continued to work construction even when challenging for and winning world titles.
But few can lay claim to the “throwback” sobriquet more legitimately than DeGuardia himself. Plenty of people in boxing claim the sport courses through their veins. When DeGuardia says it, he means it, in an almost literal sense.
His father, Joe DeGuardia Snr, was a pro boxer in the 1940s and 1950s, competing in the welterweight division and amassing a modest record of 10-7-1 (4 KOs) under the tutelage of a young trainer by the name of Angelo Dundee.
Years later, DeGuardia Jnr would also pick up the gloves, periodically working out at Dundee’s Fifth Street Gym in Miami Beach, while his father did what he could to prevent his son following in his footsteps.
“Angelo was always a gentleman, but you know how it is in boxing gyms: there’s always money guys hanging around, and they were trying to get me. I was a good amateur. I had the background with my family being in boxing. But my father used to kick them out. He loved that I boxed when I was young, but he just felt that, if I had something else, I shouldn’t be doing it for a living.”
Fortunately for DeGuardia, he did have something else, and although he won the 1988 New York Golden Gloves in the welterweight division, he chose a career in law instead, working in the Bronx District Attorney’s Office before founding his own private practice.
The love of boxing still burned, however. In 1991, he took over the Morris Park Boxing Club, which his father had opened, and in 1992 he founded Star Boxing.
Among the boxers to have graced Star Boxing’s roster over the years are the likes of Antonio Tarver, Demetrius Andrade, Lou del Valle, Aaron Davis, and Carlos Takam; but it is developing and promoting up-and-comers, particularly in front of a local audience, that DeGuardia enjoys the most.
“The build-up process is a nice process,” he says. “I mean, you get excitement. People – fans, the industry – get excited when you’re building a fighter. And it’s a beautiful thing, by the way, for a guy to become a star in his own area.”
Developing fighters in that way isn’t just good for the fighters concerned, DeGuardia points out; it also benefits the sport. Alas, he argues, it’s a vanishing art.
“You’re building the fighter from the grassroots level. But while you’re doing that, you’re also creating a fanbase,” he argues. “You’re creating an interest in our sport. And that’s going away, by the way. There’s nobody really promoting anymore. It’s very, very hard to find people really promoting our sport and promoting the game, and, you know, promoting fights.”
There are reasons for that, of course. There is a lot more money to be made from signing ready-made fighters and sitting back and counting Saudi riyals or streaming dollars; promoting up-and-comers in club shows is not only significantly less lucrative, it’s hard work.
“It’s a very difficult game, and certainly in the weeks leading up to a fight, when you have three fallouts and you have this happen and that happen, and every possible thing that could go wrong goes wrong, and you say, ‘What am I doing here?’ But then fight night arrives and, yeah, I love it. I still love it. Fight night is always something special. And it really is nice to see everybody get together and an event come off, and fighters fight their hearts out.
“I still love boxing. It’s a tough business but a beautiful sport. I still think it’s the best sport out there, but I’ve learned you have to roll with the punches, take your shot, and get back up again. It’s the same outside the ropes as inside.”
Boxing is undergoing one of its periodic convulsions, as Saudi money and streaming platforms transform the way that the higher echelons of the sport are funded and delivered to the public. How much of that money and attention is trickling down to those who need it the most is, on the other hand, unclear. While the spigot has not exactly been turned off, it is certainly dripping rather than gushing. As DeGuardia looks ahead to a half-century of outings at the Paramount, he hopes that such shows can provide a direct connection between the sport and its fans that he worries is in danger of being eroded.
“We need to support the grassroots level,” he implores. “Not just me, local shows in general. I’m always glad when I see a good local show. We strive to make it a fan-friendly experience for our fans. I must have done over 500 shows all together in my life in different places, but it’s rewarding to do 50 shows at one location. It truly is great to support those local shows and to support our sport. Right now, the top of the sport is making big, big money, but yeah, everybody else is not, and that’s not a good thing.
“So hopefully we can figure out a way to really make this sport what it could be and what it should be, because it’s a great sport.”
Kieran Mulvaney has written, broadcast and podcast about boxing for HBO, Showtime, ESPN and Reuters, among other outlets. He presently co-hosts the “Fighter Health Podcast” with Dr. Margaret Goodman. He also writes regularly for National Geographic, has written several books on the Arctic and Antarctic, and is at his happiest hanging out with wild polar bears. His website is www.kieranmulvaney.com.
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