The Life Of A Global Boxing Promoter - Kalle Sauerland | Modern Wisdom Podcast 296

And then, boom, boom, boom, "I'm the baddest man on the planet," and he's ripped the table up. It's Del, me, Eddie Hearn, Adam Smith from Sky, uh, Gillian Whyte, Mark Tibbs, that was the top table, and he's lifted... He hasn't thrown, like, something at him. He's picked the whole press conference table up and launched it across, (laughs) across the <|agent|><|en|> (wind whooshing) For the people that aren't already familiar with you and what you do, can you give us a rundown of your history?

Well, I'm, I'm first and foremost a boxing promoter. Um, born into a crazy boxing family. Um, people say, "How long you been in boxing?" And I say, "Well, I'm 43 years old now, and I believe that my first babysitter when I was two, um, was a, was a, was actually a world champion at the time." Um, so I, I had babysitters as boxers. As a teenager, I worked in gyms in the summer or when I bunked off school. My, um, my adopted godfather, uh, was the late and great Denny Mancini who ran Lonsdale, started Lonsdale at a little shop down... Before Lonsdale became big, at a little shop down, um, near Carnaby Street, Beak Street in, uh, Soho in London. And, um, used to skive off school, just hang around the little shop, you know, and watch the, uh, watch the characters come in and out of the shop. You know, it was everything from, from your East End gangsters to your world champions to your, to your bin men who box at the weekend and were picking up some reps. So, you know, it's, uh, it's a... You know, boxing is often seen as a very glamorous sport, a very murky sport, a very colorful sport and, you know, there's, you know, it... I've got to say, in my two and a half decades in the sport of actually working in it, and especially my early days, I worked a lot in football as well, um, it's just the characters that make it, you know? It's just the characters. We are, on paper, we're an unregulated sport. You know, anyone can become a boxing promoter tomorrow. You gotta, you know, be in the, in Britain, you've got to get your British Board of Boxing control license, but the questions aren't the toughest to answer. Um, actually I, I don't even have a license. My brother's a licensed promoter. So, um, I've only done the test, so I don't, I don't know how easy the questions are. Maybe I'll fail. But, um, no, we've certainly... We've, you know, we've, we've, I've promoted all over the world from last year in Japan. Um, actually, no. Uh, God, I'm getting knocked out with all this lockdown stuff. It wasn't even last year, it was the end of the year, but just before pandemic hit.

It feels like last year.

In Japan.

2020 is a write-off.