When Jay Z first announced that he was launching a sports agency, many insiders thought it would be a horrible idea. Remember when Master P tried to get into sports management, what a disaster that was.
Jay has managed to not only duck the critics, but he’s been able to build a pretty great quality of clients on his roster. Roc Nation Sports can boast names like OKC Thunder and NBA MVP Kevin Durant, Ndomakan Suh of the Detroit Lions, Dallas Cowboys wide reciever Dez Bryant and many, many more.
Jay is now adding a new division to the Roc Nation Sports, boxing. Last night the company put on their first televised boxing event. With fellow Roc Nation affiliates, Fabolous and Angie Martinez in the building, the night was truly a celebration of Roc Nation as a whole. The family got a chance to celebrate two more times last night, after ESPN broker these two pieces of news.
Firs they announced the partnership between Roc Nation Sports and a major boxing promotion company.
The deal, which had been in the works for more than a month, was finalized around the time Roc Nation Sports was conducting the weigh-in for its first card Friday night (Fox Sports 1/Fox Deportes, 10 ET) at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, which is headlined by welterweight prospect Dusty Hernandez-Harrison against Tommy Rainone.
Under the agreement, Gary Shaw Productions will be absorbed into Roc Nation Sports — including most of the contracts of the 20 or so fighters he promotes — and Shaw will run Roc Nation Sports’ boxing division along with chief operating officer David Itskowitch, who joined the company before it announced in August that it would begin promoting boxing.
Shaw said fighters from his stable who will now be promoted by Roc Nation Sports include heavyweight contender Bryant Jennings, who is close to a deal to challenge world champion Wladimir Klitschko on April 25 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn; junior welterweight contender Thomas Dulorme; Perez; Maicelo; middleweight Tureano Johnson, who fights in Friday’s Garden co-feature; lightweight prospect Kenneth Simms Jr.; welterweight Francisco Santana, who fights in the ESPN2 co-feature; and former middleweight titlist Daniel Geale.
The second piece solidified why the partnership was so important. After the news of Shaw and his company joining Roc Nation, super middleweight champion Andre Ward announced he was leaving his longtime promoter to join Jay over at Roc Nation.
Big moves for a company that was not supposed to be out of business by now,
© 2015, Mehka King. All rights reserved.
