By Larry Goldberg
Yesterday I said I am not promoting one event, I am promoting 14 stories. Before I get to them, I owe you one more. Mine. And it is not a winner.
We got the card past the regulatory finish line. Everything has been submitted, and all seven fights now sit with the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board and its doctors. All bouts are subject to their final approval, and a promoter once told me something I have never forgotten: you do not really know a fight is happening until the two of them walk out and the bell rings. That is how it should be. But deadlines are given for a reason, and I missed some of them. Licensing and medical paperwork that should have been in on time was not. The commission was more accommodating than it had to be. We were fined. I was wrong, and I am not going to dress it up. The most important thing this week is not me or my feelings. It is the health and safety of the fighters, and the system that protects them worked exactly the way it is supposed to.
Here is what I learned. In 2026, one person cannot do a club show by himself. Maybe he could five years ago. Not now. I am the promoter, the publicist, the ticket seller, the travel agent, the guy chasing a fighter who no-showed an eye exam that was booked three weeks ago, and the guy driving a kid from Italy to redo his physical because the first office got it wrong. Every one of those hours is an hour the paperwork does not get checked. We used to say promoting boxing is like herding cats. It is not. It is like herding 20 cats across a football field while the game is in progress. It is nobody’s fault, and it is also entirely my fault, because I am the one who said I could handle it. I brought in boxing professionals to help. It was not enough. You need an army. The big promoters have one. I have a phone. Thomas Hauser once told me, more or less, that the qualities that make me a decent human being make me a bad boxing promoter. He may be right about the business. I got into this as a media guy who thought he could show the industry a better way to do it, and I still believe that. But a better way still needs people to carry it out, and this week I did not have enough of them. Changes are being made for the next show, and this will not happen again.
Now the 14 stories. Because these kids are why we do this.
Justin Figueroa vs. Luis Caraballo Ramos. These two do not like each other. In March they were three rounds into a real fight when it ended with Caraballo Ramos slammed to the canvas and carried out on a stretcher. He was fine ten minutes later. The fight was ruled a no contest and settled nothing. Caraballo Ramos does not think Justin is any good. Justin does not think Caraballo Ramos is any good. Both of them are promising a knockout. You do not get fights like this anymore. And Justin has been the local star of this series since the first show. We call him Mr. Atlantic City. I say he should be the future mayor. Friday he fights at home with unfinished business.
George Arias vs. Joe Jones. Another event fell apart, and a 19-1-1 heavyweight needed a fight before the end of the year. He beat Earl Newman for us at Sony Hall, so I got the call. Jones comes up from Virginia for roughly his 30th pro fight. It is not a fight night in Atlantic City without a heavyweight fight.
Iman Lee vs. Dannis Aguero Arias. Lee is one of the best fighters in New York, an NABF champion who has fought in Saudi Arabia. His father reached out through a friend and said they wanted to fight in Atlantic City. My honest first thought was that I could not afford him. We figured it out. Aguero Arias is 20-6, tough as nails, and has shared a ring with Guillermo Rigondeaux.
John Leonardo vs. Kevin Nunez. John main-evented our first Tropicana card. Justin was on the undercard that night. Some fighters you just like, and the Leonardos are good stock, an Italian kid with a great dad who boxed himself. They call him Body Shot because every punch he lands looks like it belongs in a textbook, right to the stomach. He was supposed to be on our last show and pulled out a week before with a hand injury, and it killed him. He loves to fight.
JJ Alvarez vs. Larry Fryers. I have known Juan Leon, who fights as JJ Alvarez, for years. He is a trainer at Mendez Boxing in New York, which is less a gym than a family, and the whole Mendez crew looks out for him. He is 11-3-1, a real pro who has been in good fights but never got the push to the next level. They asked to put him on the card, and I said it only makes sense if we find someone with a story. They came back with Larry Fryers, a former Mendez trainer who knows Juan personally. Fryers fought on one of my early cards when nobody wanted to make his fight, and he was the classic club fighter, took a couple to give a couple and loved every minute. Two trainers from the same gym, nothing to lose, settling it in the ring. That is a club fight.
Koby Khalil Williams vs. Salvatore Di Stefano. Koby turned pro on our very first Atlantic City show and used to train with our group. He is managed by Marty Hopwood of TMA Management, one of the best people in the business. Di Stefano is the Italian kid I drove to his medicals. He flew in alone, checked into a hotel in a country he had never seen, and spent his first two days in doctors’ offices because that is what New Jersey requires. He is young, he is here to fight, and we hope he is the start of a talent exchange with the groups in Italy. Do not write him off as a B side.
Julio Sanchez III vs. Skyler Bray. This is the one I like. Julio’s father trained Bruce Seldon and helped restart the boxing program at the Pleasantville recreation center. He called me and said he wanted to take his kid pro. Julio had main-evented our first amateur show at the PAL and brought a crowd that rushed the ring. So I took him pro. This is his first six-rounder. Pleasantville does not get many good stories, and Julio is one. Bray is driving in from Ohio, active, and looking for a good fight.
And the people telling these stories are a story themselves. This is not a network crew flown in for the night. It is ours. Josh Hennig is the ESPN guy, 97.3 in Atlantic City, on play by play. Curtis Jones is a former pro, one of the best boxing minds I know and one of the funniest people alive. He should have his own show. Eric Bottjer is a working matchmaker who knows how the sausage gets made from the inside. Sarah Cunningham is a pro in boxing media doing the interviews. Our production people shoot a lot of boxing, and I have always said our shows look like ECW or old indie wrestling, raw and close to the ring, and I mean that as a compliment. There are a hundred stories in this building, in the fighters, the trainers, the corners and the people who flew in to be here. This is the crew that gets to tell them.
Then there is me. I am a story too, but mine does not peak Friday night. Mine is to be continued. I built a franchise in a casino showroom with local fighters and no network, and I hit a ceiling this week that I did not see coming. I am not doing every job myself again. Maybe what I am good at belongs inside something bigger than one man and his crazy dreams. I do not know yet. What I know is that we live to fight another day, and when I come back to New Jersey, it will be with a different operation behind me.
Today is the weigh-in. There are 75 people who all need a hotel room, a ride, a meal and an answer, and one guy with a phone. Anything can still happen. We will get through it. We always do.
Friday, 7 p.m., The Showroom at Tropicana Atlantic City. Tickets at Ticketmaster and the Tropicana box office. Free stream on BoxingInsider.com and the Boxing Insider YouTube page.
