In a business whose practitioners – fighters, promoters, and too many media alike – reflexively wallow in self-aggrandizement, Tom Loeffler is an outlier.
He does not feel the need to big-up his fighters by belittling their opponents, is disinclined to get into slanging matches with his rivals, and is not disposed toward engaging in social media flame wars.
It almost begs the question of how the head of 360 Promotions – and formerly of K2 Promotions – wound up in the fetid swamp that is professional boxing in the first place.
“My background is in finance and real estate, and my father was a real estate broker here in Los Angeles, and that was the path I was going into,” he explained to BoxingScene recently. But then he began working with a good friend of his from high school who ran a sports memorabilia business.
“Through the memorabilia, he started representing retired athletes directly, for example when they were doing autograph signings and licensing deals of their image and likeness, and he was able to land some of the biggest names in the history of sports,” he continued. “Muhammad Ali was the biggest name. And through Ali, we met a lot of fighters and had a lot of boxing people approach us.”
One of them was a writer who was close with featherweight contender Kevin Kelley.
“Kevin was frustrated with his management because he was rated number one but couldn't get a world title fight,” Loeffler explains. “And then we signed him to a contract, and within about a year's time, we got him on HBO.”
He pauses and chuckles as he thinks about the famously voluble “Flushing Flash.”
“Well, actually he got himself on HBO. I have to give him credit for that. He kind of cornered Lou DiBella in the men's bathroom and wouldn't let him leave until he got him on HBO.”
Kelley became an HBO staple, his exciting style winning him fans each time out. And just like that, Loeffler was in the boxing business.
Through Kelley, Loeffler met Shane Mosley, and within one fight of signing a management deal with Loeffler, Mosley secured and won his first title shot, for the IBF lightweight crown, against Phillip Holliday. James Toney signed on for a few fights. And then, in October 1999, Loeffler managed to get his heavyweight Ed Mahone a shot at WBO titlist Vitali Klitschko.
Mahone was squashed inside three rounds, but afterward Loeffler spoke with the champion. It was a conversation that would change his life.
“I’d seen Vitali during fight week, and I was always friendly with them,” he explains. “And then afterwards, we were talking, and I said to Vitali that if he ever wanted to come to the office in Los Angeles, he was welcome to come and meet Ali. And sure enough, he came to the office, met Ali, and we developed a personal relationship.”
Klitschko was growing disenchanted with his promotional situation, “and he would ask me questions, career advice questions: What do you think about this or, you know, what do you think about these offers, that type of thing.”
When his contract was up, Klitschko wanted to sign with an American promoter and fight in the U.S. – until Loeffler suggested a different approach.
“I said, ‘Let’s just start our own promotional company.’ And that’s how I came up with the name K2, because it’s Klitschko times two. And also, the mountain K2 is one of the highest mountains in the world. So I thought the name was pretty applicable.”
Their first fight together was when, following Lennox Lewis’ abdication, Klitschko fought Corrie Sanders for the vacant title at Staples Center in 2004. It was Loeffler’s very first show as a promoter, and HBO’s first at the then-new venue.
“I gotta say, they put their faith in me,” Loeffler reflects. “I mean, to do the very first show on HBO at Staples Center, Vitali had to put a lot of faith and trust in me. But, you know, everyone was happy. HBO was very happy with the production. The California [State Athletic] Commission was happy with everything. The WBC was happy with it. German TV was happy.”
Loeffler was off and running as a promoter.
Between Vitali’s two runs as WBC titleholder and Wladimir’s lengthy reign with Emanuel Steward in his corner, Loeffler has now promoted more heavyweight title bouts than anyone this century, “a proud accomplishment that I’m not sure anyone is going to break anytime soon.”
Seven years after first hooking up with the Klitschkos, Loeffler connected with another fighter with whom he would have several hugely successful years: a German-based Kazakh middleweight by the name of Gennadiy Golovkin.
Golovkin, as the Klitschko brothers had been, was less than thrilled with his promotional situation, and he had recently traveled to Big Bear to begin working with Abel Sanchez when a mutual connection introduced him to Loeffler.
“I didn’t know how good he was going to be, but when Abel told me that this is the hardest punching boxer that he'd ever caught mitts for: well, that was all I needed to know,” recalls Loeffler. “And I could tell how disciplined an athlete Gennadiy was, and he really wanted to make the sacrifice of being over here, even as he left his family in Germany.”
While Loeffler’s first event with Vitali Klitschko was in front of a full house at Staples Center, the start of his relationship with Golovkin was in entirely more modest circumstances.
Not that it had been planned that way. The plan was for Golovkin to in be the co-main event to Wladimir Klitschko’s 2011 title defense against Jean-Marc Mormeck in a soccer stadium in Dusseldorf, Germany, until Klitschko had to withdraw with abdominal pains – which turned out to be a kidney stone.
“The opponent [Lajuan Simon] was there, Gennady was there,” he remembers. “Everything was set up. The German commission was there. So we literally just switched the venue, and at that time, because he didn't have the promotion from the German promoter he was with, he defended his WBA title in front of 500 people in a hotel ballroom.”
Once Golovkin was fully clear of residual promotional connections, Loeffler made his approach to U.S. networks.
“My pitch was pretty clear and pretty simple,” he says. “I said, ‘He doesn't need a lot of money. He doesn't care who he fights. Just put him on, on any show, and let him prove himself.’”
HBO took up the challenge, and Golovkin blasted his way past a succession of overpowered opposition. Grzegorz Proksa fell in five, Gabe Rosado in seven, Nobuhiro Ishida in three.
“He’s the most destructive athlete that I’ve seen in his prime,” he says. “I would have to say his prime was from 2011 to maybe 2016; and in those five years of his prime, I don’t know anyone that could have withstood his punching power and accuracy. He broke Matthew Macklin’s rib with a body shot. Daniel Geale, he [Golovkin] got hit square in the face and threw a punch about a half a second later that knocked Geale out.”
Loeffler was flying high, but then the ground shifted beneath him. Golovkin began to decline and lost, controversially, to Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Their rematch was the last pay-per-view on HBO; a couple of weeks later, the network announced its departure from the sport.
“Ever since I got into the boxing business with Kevin Kelley, the pinnacle as a boxing manager or as a promoter was getting an HBO date. HBO made all the stars. I was so attached to HBO through the Klitschko fights, through the Triple G fights, through Chocolatito [Roman Gonzalez] and the Superfly shows that when HBO got out [of] the business, I was in a void. I didn’t know what to do.”
Loeffler began a series of club shows in Los Angeles that he called Hollywood Fight Nights, initially in front of crowds of 700 or so. It being Hollywood, several of the fighters on the card were trained by Freddie Roach, who one day introduced him to a young Irish boxer he was working with called Callum Walsh.
“Freddie said, ‘I have this new Irish kid that just came to the gym.’ Almost identical to what Abel said about GGG, he said, ‘This is one of the best young fighters I’ve ever seen.’ And we decided to put Callum’s pro debut on one of the shows.”
Shortly thereafter Loffler arranged a meeting with UFC head honcho Dana White, whom he had known since White professed himself a Golovkin fan.
Loeffler mentioned Walsh to White, whose eyes lit up at the thought of tapping once more into the Irish fanbase that had proven so successful for him when Conor McGregor had been at his peak.
White gave Loeffler four dates on the UFC Fight Pass streaming service, which became a multi-year deal and a platform for Loeffler’s growing stable of up-and-comers, including Walsh, Gor Yeritsyan, Omar Trinidad, Cain Sandoval and Mizuki Hiruta.
“It’s a fun project, because unlike HBO, this is a worldwide streaming service,” he says. “They do over 220 events a year. So you have a really broad audience. And the great thing here is the cross-promotion with the MMA fans that follow the UFC. And Dana, wherever he goes, he gets a lot of attention. And whenever he posts about Callum on the UFC social media channels, it gets a lot of traction.”
For someone who began in finance and real estate before taking a detour into the sports memorabilia business, it has been an unexpected, eventful, and productive three decades in boxing. And, notably, it has been three decades spent doing business the right way.
“It's one of the things I pride myself on,” he says of his reputation for decency. “I mean, it’s just the nature of my character. First of all, that’s the way I was raised. But secondly, I think it's opened up a lot of opportunities that I might not have gotten. If I come to an agreement and the situation changes, and I’m going to lose money on the agreement, I still honor it, because, you know, I entered into that agreement.
“Some people in boxing, there’s a contract that’s signed, and that’s when they start negotiating. They try to change everything that was just agreed to, and that’s not my style. Unfortunately, a lot of people in boxing have a bad reputation for that, and I try to stay above that. And even if the athlete’s not on top, I try to stay with them for the length of their career.”
More than that, says Loeffler, who was recently inducted into the National Boxing Hall of Fame, he prides himself on remaining close with his fighters long after their careers have ended.
“Every time I go to Vegas, I reach out to Kevin Kelley,” he says. “I still talk to the [Klitschko] brothers on a regular basis. I just saw Wladimir in Los Angeles about two weeks ago. I think back on everything I experienced with them, not just professionally but personally. They took me around Kiev and multiple cities in Ukraine; I traveled the world with them, whether it was when Vitali fought in Poland, or the number of times they fought in Germany, or when Wladimir defended against Alexander Povetkin in Russia.
“It’s been a tremendous, tremendous experience.”
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, including most recently Arctic Passages: Ice, Exploration, and the Battle for Power at the Top of the World, and is at his happiest hanging out with wild polar bears. His website is kieranmulvaney.com.
