Broadway Boxing has been a staple of New York’s boxing scene for 12 years, offering a grass roots platform for prospects to groom into champions. Star Boxing offers the same opportunity with club shows on Long Island. Madison Square Garden is known as the Mecca of Boxing, while Barclays Center is building its own ring tradition.
But boxing in New York could become all but extinct if a clause in the newly signed bill legalizing mixed martial arts isn’t adjusted.
Included in the bill, signed by Gov. Cuomo on April 14, is an increase in the medical insurance promoters are required to have on each fighter competing in a boxing or MMA event. The minimum requirement for basic medical insurance has been increased from $10,000 to $50,000, which isn’t a huge issue, local boxing promoters say.
What would ruin their business is a late amendment that requires promoters to provide additional insurance or a financial guarantee of $1 million on each fighter to cover medical, surgical and hospital care for the treatment of life-threatening brain injuries.
For starters, it’s doubtful an insurance company will underwrite a million-dollar policy on potential brain injuries to a boxer. Secondly, the premiums would be massive. If no insurance can be found, requiring a million-dollar bond on each fighter is more risk than most promoters or venues can take. Industry giants such as UFC, Top Rank Inc. and Golden Boy promotions might be able to absorb such costs, but smaller companies can’t.
Lou DiBellaAP“If that law is not repealed or changed, it would end boxing in New York as we know it,” Lou DiBella of DiBella Entertainment said. “It’ll be the end of boxing on a regular basis in New York.”
Joe DeGuardia, the head of Star Boxing, also expressed doom.
“That kind of insurance would be impossible to get for a local, non-HBO type show,” he said. “The amount is too high. It will make it where fighters won’t be able to fight here in New York.”
That’s not all. The increase in medical insurance also will keep smaller MMA promotional companies out of New York. Jimmy Burchfield Jr., vice-president of CES (Classic Entertainment & Sports) MMA, based in Rhode Island, had to abandon plans to hold an event in New York.
“We were in serious discussions to bring the first show to New York before the UFC or Bellator,” Burchfield said. “But that $50,000 is a huge line item. It takes us out of the ballpark. You’re probably not going to see many companies our size risk doing a show there.”
The New York State Athletic Commission does have the jurisdiction to “adjust” the insurance requirements prior to Sept. 1. David Berlin, who had served as executive director of the NYSAC for the last two years, had quieted concerns of local promoters by assuring them he favored eliminating the million-dollar requirement.
But Berlin unexpectedly was removed from his position on Monday and replaced by Eric Bentley. Berlin was offered reassignment in the commission’s legal department, but he wrote a letter of resignation to Gov. Cuomo on Monday.
“My decision was to say no to the proposition,” Berlin told The Post on Tuesday. “I saw it as their attempt to orchestrate the way that I was removed from the commission to paint a nice public image and say something like, David Berlin returned to his first love, the law, and returned to the legal department. That was a false picture and I wasn’t about to be party to that kind of orchestration.”
Berlin has no say now, but favored an adjustment to the current insurance legislation.
“Based on my research and based on speaking with insurance brokers, the million-dollar requirement is something most underwriters will not even underwrite and if they do it would be prohibitively expensive,” he said. “I don’t think anything is good that drives boxing out of New York. Certainly, no clause can be helpful to boxers which causes boxers to lose the opportunity to fight. This clause has that practical effect.”
It’s not clear where Bentley stands. He did not return a call from The Post. The Commission has expanded to five commissioners and will undoubtedly vote on a potential adjustment. Right now a bill once viewed as a means to increase combat business in the state actually will diminish it.
