Kalle Sauerland is the son of an International Boxing Hall of Fame promoter and their surname is one of the most-established in European boxing.

It reflects a different time in the sport, when Germany was a world force with a conveyor belt of champions and Sauerland Event and Universum battled bitterly over fighters, staff, and TV deals.

Despite the competitive nature of the promotional powerhouses, both enjoyed tremendous success with a number of flagship fighters, but the world has since changed.

Germany is short on world-level talent, and the days of Klaus-Peter Kohl and Wilfried Sauerland at the forefront have gone.

But the Sauerland name lives on through Kalle, and his brother Nisse. 

Sauerland merged with management group Wasserman in March 2021 to form Wasserman Boxing, but the times, they are a changing, and Kalle is open to anything and everything to help develop, grow, build, resurrect or even save the sport.

He is also a front man for Misfits Boxing, works with promoter Mams Taylor and KSI on huge boxing events that play to an influencer rather than boxing audience. 

Aficionados shake their heads at Misfits, but Kalle is open to learning lessons from the noisy promotional offshoot, and seeing how those lessons from “crossover boxing” could help boxing crossover and back into the mainstream consciousness of sports fans.

Kalle, 48 next month, appreciates tradition, and he might even grudgingly respect it, but he is not wedded to it. Nor will he close his eyes to possibilities or opportunities to expand his business and grow the sport. 

With that in mind, he has put a lot of work up against Misfits, learning plenty along the way.

Some see Sauerland as a sell-out, departing the family business and the traditional mode of boxing. But he still does promote boxing, and has the Channel 5 deal which boasts as many as two million pairs of eyeballs tuning in to watch Harlem Eubank and for which he has added Michael Conlan to the stable.

“I've still got a few ambitions in traditional boxing and in the last year or so, obviously, you get a lot of, ‘Oh, he's left boxing,’” Sauerland explains. “’He’s gone from that to that’, right, which is fair enough. My argument would be, you know, it's business.

“I don't look at it like I want this to take over boxing, I honestly think people look at me and think like, ‘This guy's gone fucking mad, right?’” laughs Sauerland. “’He loves his concepts, and now he's put it into influencer boxing, and influencer boxing is gonna take over pro boxing.’”
“I really don't see it like that. I think that there is stuff, and, you know, you can shoot me for this, but I do think there’s stuff that pro boxing needs very urgently, very urgently, to learn from what's happening in the Misfits space.”

Sauerland is not necessarily thinking now, but in time, in the future. And he is perfectly comfortable talking about ‘out there’ concepts with someone he knows is a traditionalist and who is knows is a similar age to him.

“The reason for that is that when we’re all on walking frames, right, the kids who are watching Misfits now, will be in the boxing demographic. And I can tell you now, they’re not gonna watch 12 round fights, mate. It’s not gonna happen. Not gonna happen. So, what format is gonna let boxing survive? And we can all be romantics till we go to the grave on this. But we need to also think about sport. What can we bring in? And I’m not saying we need to do tag teams tomorrow. But, have you ever watched one of the Misfits tag teams?”

Sauerland sensed this interviewer rolling his eyes, but that did not stop his flow.

“I’ve not. No,” I replied.

“Go and watch one,” he persisted. “Just do it as a bit of a, bit of a gimmick, but watch it with a beer, right?” 

Eyes roll again.

“Maybe two,” he adds. 

Then he pressed on: “But then now, just imagine, though, just imagine you had the tactics that come out of it. And, again, people say, ‘That's unsafe.’ I don't quite understand that. No, you’ve actually got a chance to get out of the ring and have a breather, right? But, and I’m not saying that necessarily ‘that's a format', but it’s certainly a format we should be looking at. And there’s the format I thought it was a pretty good, I can't remember the exact format, but it was something like the clock started at six minutes and started going downwards, this knockout thing. If we don't start looking at those formats, the kids, they’re not going to sit there for 48 fucking minutes. Also, think about if you put in Beterbiev-Bivol and you only give them five rounds. You say, Beterbiev, ‘You’ve only got five rounds, son.’ Do you know what he’s gonna fuckin’ do? Do you know what that motherfucker is gonna do if he’s only got five rounds? You’re going to see war. And that’s not promoter war, that’s a real war. Because he’s got five rounds to do him. I’m not saying that five rounds is the magic number, but the UFC has got it about right, no? I mean, they don’t do 12-rounders.”

It was only recently when Kalle tried to sit with his family to watch a movie and they pleaded with him to watch a boxset that reinforced his notions of shorter attention spans and how consumption of just about everything has evolved.

Sauerland speaks with passion but it is backed up by concern for the future. He is trying to get in front of what he believes could be significant issues for boxing’s well-being. And it is a position he never though he would find himself in almost a decade ago, having been a significant part of Showtime’s Super Six tournament, for which he delivered both Arthur Abraham and Mikkel Kessler.

It was during that event when Sauerland created some of his fondest memories, with the pinnacle coming on a wild night in Herning, Denmark, when Danish great Kessler took the undefeated record of Carl Froch in an unforgettable fight. They battled through 12 hard rounds and that atmosphere was both unique and special.

It was the unpredictability of a 50-50 fight in its truest sense, as well as a feud that bubbled between Froch and Sauerland, that only added to the occasion and emotion.

“The excitement of who is going to win,” said Sauerland, recalling the biggest win of Kessler’s career, “is everything.”

“Herning was a great crowd as well. If you weren’t there, you wouldn’t understand. It was just a spectacular night. Now, for me, that night, it was what boxing is all about. It was like a tinderbox. You stood on beer that was all over the floor, it was like a swamp. Do you remember the last round? So I've gone to Jimmy [Montoya, Kessler’s trainer] and Kessler in the corner and said, ‘Mikkel, we've got to get through the last round.’

“And I’m going, ‘You just fucking run, jab, run, fucking run. He's going to come for you, he’s going to come, just fucking run.’ 

“And it was real hatred with me and Froch at the time as well. We were fucking at it with each other. And it was everything. I’ve never been so invested in a fight, not financially, emotionally. And then Mikkel's just gone out, he just starts loading up and I’ve gone, ‘What the fuck you doing?’ I honestly thought I was going to have a heart attack. I just remember sitting there, I was shaking like this. That night I went to my room, everyone’s gone partying and said ‘do you want to come out?’ I went to my bed and I swear to God I had some outer-body fucking weird shit. And I felt myself going through the fucking bed. I’ve never had so much adrenaline of anything in my life like that night. But you wouldn't understand it unless you were there. That event was much bigger than the rematch in the O2. It was an amazing fight. But it was something else because it wasn't a proper venue. It was a 10,000-seater shed, and we squeezed about 14,000 in. If we had a fucking fire, they would have fucking killed me.”

But, despite the critics, despite those memories and despite admitting his Hall of Fame dad is not pro-Misfits – “doesn't understand it, not for him” – Sauerland knows the boxing business and Misfits are very separate, as are the audiences.

”I do see that the one audience can bleed into the other, and that hopefully will happen. I don't know if you've seen, but there's an MF Pro now,” Sauerland explains. “So they've signed four or five guys from the States, [Amir] ‘Cashman’ Anderson probably being the most high profile. He's a 10-time Golden Glove winner, national champion. And there's a couple of others. There's about 25 on my list that Mams Taylor would like to sign. But the idea is not to straight away go in and sign a big name, but rather build some smaller shows, pro shows, and use our reach on Misfits to push it over onto traditional.”

In terms of engagement, Sauerland estimates that the numbers generated on the Misfits platforms in the 18-30 demographic puts them above all of their promotional rivals combined for engagement.

Sauerland is more TV executive than matchmaker for Misfits, and he jokes that his biggest achievement was working on KSI-Tommy Fury. But he is only half-joking and he gets serious again for a moment.

“I'll tell you why. Because you had an engaged audience that weren't necessarily throwing chairs, but they were in there from 5pm to midnight,” Sauerland goes on.

“That’s my dream for boxing. That’s my fucking dream for boxers. I said that at the start of this year, for the audience to show up at the start and stay till the end. You go through a fucking camp, right? Josh Kelly, he went through a camp of hell, a six-month camp, to fight a guy who unfortunately didn't turn up [Liam Smith].

“But he did it [boxed substitute Ishmael Davis] in front of 2,000 people in a 90,000 seater [Wembley Stadium]. Do you know how heart-breaking that must be? Do you know when you take those pictures after your career and you look at it and say, ‘Well, there were a few people… you don't see them on the picture.’ So that part, definitely.”

Sauerland’s open-ended thinking has already seen him trying to figure out how to get fans in from the first bell. 

“Start with the main event,” he smiles. “That's how Misfits start, we do the main event to start the night. I said, ‘What the fuck is this?’ We need to look at co-features to start with. We need to start the night with a bang. The problem you’re going to have is that it’s not just down to the promoter, it’s down to the broadcaster as well. That’s your first hurdle. But yeah, it’s the million, or should I say the billion-dollar question of how do you get them in? And the good news is that the kids coming through now are used to that. I also think, and me and my brother are at this all the time, I looked at Brighton [the Sauerland show this Friday] again. Traditionists will say, ‘Fuck me, brilliant, what a card, 11 fights.’ And I'm like, ‘No, bro, it's far too much. It’s fucking far too much. Six, max, seven, eight, max.’”

Then, with a nod to the family past, Sauerland recalls a different time and a different place.

“I’ll tell you one place it was full from the first bell, East Germany. Do you know why? Because they actually like boxing. I don’t think people here actually go to events – I’m not saying all – but unfortunately the delta between what’s in the stadium at the beginning and the main event to a large degree, those people who turn up to a main event, they don’t give a shit about boxing. They want to be seen to be there. And they want to tell their mates they’ve been there and they want to go out and drink beer until the main event. That’s, unfortunately, the culture. So how to change the culture is the tricky one. What we need to do, though, is look at things like some of the concepts, how they get them in early. It’s that part. The more I think about it, and I think about the East German mob, the reason they were in early… they would stand in the fucking queue to get into that venue. I remember Brandenburg was one we went to quite a lot, and literally you’d queue to get into the venue. First bell. You can offer beer at the seat, I don’t know, to bring them in. The Misfits? They don’t even fucking drink. They sit there with their Pepsi light, all night, and eat popcorn and it’s like WWE. It’s not, because it’s full contact and everything else, but it’s that vibe.”

Recently, MMA veteran and former UFC star Darren Till competed in a Misfits contest, winning comfortably, for the first time and surprised Sauerland with how he fought.

“I didn't think that he would be quite that effective. Now, what does that mean, and what would happen if he went out and fought a [legitimate] light heavy? I think he'd have a right tear up at British level. I'll tell you that now. I was surprised. Did you see the fight?

“Everyone told me he’s shot. That's why he can't do MMA anymore,” Sauerland adds. “But clearly not. Clearly, [trainer Joe] McAnally's done some decent work on him, yeah? I was actually quite surprised. Then you've got the issue, well, he's a bit too good for Misfits, he's not good enough for a pro, so what do you do there? But yeah, we're looking at Misfits MMA and Misfits Pro as well. That’s more US though, for the moment.”

And these are the type of problems Sauerland now encounters. Of course, on Friday night he promotes a traditional fight card in Brighton with Harlem Eubank and Michael Conlan in separate fights on the bill. The scenes are likely to be far more formal and reserved than what he has become accustomed to. Sauerland operates in two different worlds.

“It’s like comparing apples and pears,” he concludes. “Darren Till sat next to me at the press conference and looked around and there was like some Only Fans girls kicking off, there was this rapper kicking off with that rapper, and I swear, Darren Till, the biggest fucking motormouth, shit-talker, most annoying prick very often at press conferences, we all know that, I was like, ‘We’ve shut him up’. And he said to me, ‘Kalle, what the fuck did you sign me up for?’ I said, ‘Darren, welcome to Misfits. The company that pays you more than others.’ It’s a mad world. It’s a mad, mad world but it’s not boxing.”