by Jorge Alacron-Swaby
Marcos Villegas recently caught up with Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson at the Yuriorkis Gamboa media day workout at the Fortune Gym in Hollywood, CA. Gamboa, who is now promoted by 50 Cent, will be facing Michael Farenas on the Marquez vs Pacquiao 4 undercard at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on December 8th.
When asked what the main goal behind his involvement with boxing and his promotional company SMS Promotions, Jackson said, “My overall goal is to make the exciting fights happen and to bring a more youthful audience to boxing, which right now is not intoned with it.” He also added, “The same people excited about me and Eminem having the number one record on iTunes, are the same people that will be excited about seeing me and Yuriorkis Gamboa on December 8th so I expect the pay-per-view numbers to be bigger than usual because we are associated with the actual matchup.”
Jackson, a former best friend of Floyd Mayweather Jr., talked about his current relationship with Mayweather’s arch rival Manny Pacquiao. When asked how the relationship with Pacquiao started, Jackson said ‘The relationship initially started when trying to make the Mayweather vs Pacquiao fight happen, so the relationship was meant to happen” He continued by saying, ‘The forty million dollars that Mayweather originally offered Pacquiao, was money that I raised.”
Jackson also implied that originally, the plan was for him and Mayweather to finance a promotional company together called TMT Promotions, but when Mayweather failed to put up his part of the money, Jackson went on his own and created SMS Promotions. “It’s not a dispute, Mayweather can go and do what makes his happy at the moment,” said Jackson. He added, “He’s trapped in a regiment of ‘fight, get the money, spent the money, fight’, there is no investment or income from anywhere outside of him fighting.”
When it came to the topic of actually promoting fights, Jackson had some strong opinions about the current problems in boxing. “What I see today is that promoters are afraid, they are afraid to face the tough fights and this is what slows boxing downs.” He used his fighter Yuriorkis Gamboa as an example, “You run into promoters not wanting to make the best fights because they are scared. I’ve run into this with Gamboa several times already with different promoters, where they say they want to make the best fights, until the moment you mention the name Gamboa”
It will be interesting to see how far SMS promotions goes in the world of boxing, or even better, how long Jackson’s enthusiasm for the sport stays with him. Under SMS Promotions, Jackson currently has a rooster of fighters consisting of Yuriorkis Gamboa, super middleweight Andre Dirrell, IBF featherweight titlist Billy Dib and featherweight Celestino Caballero. With this roster, its definitely worth waiting to see what SMS Promotions has in store for us in 2013.
