By Larry Goldberg

Weigh-ins are over. We have seven fights. Every bout on the card has been medically cleared by the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board, every fighter made weight, and tomorrow night at the Tropicana we have a fight.

I am not going to lie to you. There was a point this week when we were looking at five fights, not seven. The commission did not take our word for anything. They picked up the phone and called an imaging center to confirm that a scan was done on the date the paperwork said it was done. They checked the doctor’s license number. They checked the doctor’s phone number. That is what real regulation looks like, and it is a good thing.

The truth is the doctors need a couple of days to go over this material, and dumping work on them at the last minute was not right. That was on us. We fixed it, and as I said this morning, we are coming back with a new crew. I got put through the wringer and under the microscope this week, and it is not a pleasant feeling. They cannot show favoritism, and they did not. That is the system. It worked.

People think a we pick two guys who will make a good fight. That is maybe a tenth of it. The rest is licenses, medicals, federal IDs and making sure every dot is connected before the commission ever opens the file. When that slips, the promoter is the one standing in front of the commissioner. It is the same scramble every show. It is Groundhog Day.

And here is the part I want every other state to hear. I could pack a suitcase, go somewhere with a commission that asks for a sixty dollar blood test and nothing else, and run this entire card by myself without breaking a sweat. No brain scans. No detailed physicals. Nobody calling the imaging center. It would be easy, and the fighters would be worse off for it. This is a sport where the whole idea is to hit the other man in the head. To the states that still do not require a head exam, shame on you. I would rather be fined in New Jersey than be comfortable somewhere else.

Now let me tell you what today actually looked like. My job at a weigh-in is to shake every hand, get every bout agreement and tax form signed, and turn in the paperwork for the ambulance, the security and the scale, which has to be certified by weights and measures. Then the commission takes over and it is out of my hands. In theory. In practice, everybody wants an extra hotel room. Everybody is looking for a meal ticket. Somebody’s handler is not on the list. And I am standing in a casino hallway talking into my phone, trying to get the tale of the tape graphics right for the broadcast while people walk by wondering who the guy having the meltdown is.

When I was running shows at Sony Hall in New York, the people who ran the building explained my business to me. They said if I booked a comedian, an Andrew Dice Clay type, I would sell the same number of tickets. I would buy one plane ticket and one hotel room, and put a chair and a microphone on a stage. After the first 250 tickets, everything is profit. A boxing show has the same gate and a hundred people underneath it. Another MRI. Another car. Another room for another handler. There goes your money.

One good thing happened in that hallway. A man walked up and asked where the fight was. I pointed at the Showroom, told him tomorrow night, seven o’clock, fifty bucks. He said yes. That is the business too.

Tomorrow night every fighter on this card will put on a pair of gloves that somebody had to bring, and professional gloves are not cheap. That somebody is KDukes Boxing out of Brooklyn. They supply shows all over New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia, they made Justin Figueroa’s custom pair for the main event, and they have saved me on more than one occasion. They deserve their flowers.

Official weights for Friday, November 13 at The Showroom at Tropicana Atlantic City:

Justin Figueroa 160 vs. Luis Caraballo Ramos 160, 8 rounds, middleweight
John Leonardo 121 vs. Kevin Nunez 121, 8 rounds, junior featherweight
JJ Alvarez 148 vs. Larry Fryers 146, 6 rounds, welterweight
George Arias 251 vs. Joe Jones 234.5, 8 rounds, heavyweight
Julio Sanchez III 140 vs. Skyler Bray 139, 6 rounds, super lightweight
Iman Lee 128.5 vs. Dannis Aguero Arias 129, 8 rounds, super featherweight
Koby Khalil Williams 134 vs. Salvatore Di Stefano 134, 6 rounds, lightweight

Two days ago I did not know if that list would have five lines or seven. It has seven, and every one of them was earned the hard way.

The casino is happy to have us, and we are working on a deal to come back for more shows in 2027. We are also going back to New York next year. I do not have anything concrete to announce yet, but it is happening.

So we are good. The commission knows who I am and what I am trying to do. I came out the other side of this week a little embarrassed and a lot smarter. And ladies and gentlemen, we have a fight tomorrow night.

Friday at The Showroom at Tropicana Atlantic City. Doors at 7 p.m., first fight at 7:30. Tickets at Ticketmaster and the Tropicana box office. Free stream on BoxingInsider.com and the Boxing Insider YouTube page.