Posted by Tractorpull Magazine on 12/27/2011, 7:36 pm
Tractorpull Headquarters
Tractorpull Complex
Nashville, US, CT
Fred is in his office when his phone rings
Fred; You in Philly
Tess: Yes, right now I am at the Front Street Gym watching Neve work out in the ring. She looks sharp. She will be ready for her bout with Fox
Fred: You been paying attention to the fights and the talk
Tess: I really didn’t expect the Portman/ Danes title fight. I wish managers would give us some notice so we could predict. I would have expected Portman to win but not by the margin she did. It’s significant that Danes is moving up to bantam. Remember, she will nor be the lead fighter in that division. She is going to have to beat Dushku for that honor and I don’t see it. I have seen Miss Ginny’s comments about older women and she sure knows more about that than I do, but in looking at FCBA history, it seems to me that women who move down in weight divisions, do better than those who move up. Peregrym is an exception. Look at Jennifer Connelly and Beckinsale who both moved from Lightweight to bantam and Lohan who moved from bantam to fly
Fred: How about Vandervoort/ Glau?
Tess: About the same situation as the Portman fight. I would have predicted Vandervoort to win but would have never predicted the fight would last less than two rounds. I would have thought it would go to a decision
Fred: I guess you saw some of the other talk between Ginny and Sim
Tess: Yes I did. It seemed to me that while the talk seemed center on Charlize’s future, the significant portions were Ginny comments on the stables and number of fighters managed. You know, we have been pointing that out for two years Now Miss Ginny is voicing the concerns and Sim agrees. They are right. No one is going to release fighters from their stable. Some stables do a good job at getting their fighters bouts. Front Street runs their own PPV, but even then, most of the Front Street fighters get only four or five fights a year. because the Wiz spreads the fights around. After all they have 18 fighters when you include Neve and Jewel. Look at Bazz, another good stable. Cassie got six fights. That’s the most of anyone in the stable. More than the Welter champ, Regan. Bonzo runs a top notch stable. Discount Larter because she was on maternity leave. but Amanda got more fights than five of the six other members of the stable got combined.
Fred: You’re right. Not many fighters getting a lot of bouts
Tess: It gets worse. Look at Empire. Not counting a recent addition the stable has 14 members and they got a total of 31 fights for the whole year. Diaz has six of those, so the other 13 had a grand total of 25 between them. Over at HMK, fighters like Daniel and Bosworth got only one fight and Longoria got none. When a stable gets a great fighter they tend to push them as they should. Bonzo did a great job in getting Righetti 15 fights. Miss Ginny got Chalize 11. She is also pushing Swanepoel and also got her 11. Bonzo and Miss Ginny have to run their own PPV’s to achieve that.
Fred: So I guess you got a solution
Tess: Not one that would be acceptable to the managers, but I will tell you one thing. A lot of good fights have not been made because a manager didn’t answer a challenge. I know of one instance where manager mentioned a certain fighters name at least five different times and got no response. I am willing to bet that a manager who doesn’t answer a challenge is going to wake up one morning and find out that one of his (no her) fighters just had a fight. (Note the absence of the feminine gender. That’s because the problem doesn’t exist there). I strongly expect desirable fights are going to get made no matter if the manager wants them or not. I think and hope we are going back to the days of the early last decade. Good fights get made, period. Tractorpull will fully support such a move won’t we?
Fred: Yes we will, but isn’t that diminishing the importance of the manager
Tess; Yes and some managers need their importance diminished.
Fred: Want to name names?
Tess: I have already said enough and as soon as I hang up and going to run and tell Avril what I said before you have a chance to call her and make it worse than it is. The Wiz is not one of those names so don’t even think of it.
Fred: I guess you saw where another stable was formed
Tess: Yeah. On top of the problems we just talked about, we have another stable and six more fighters we really didn’t need. I know who two of them are. The rest must be small tube players. I don’t expect much from this new stable.
Fred: You are really going to make us popular around here
Tess: Do I care? I don’t work for Archer’s New Service. I don’t have to be nice
Fred: Finally, did you see where the Wiz said something really nice about Charlize
Tess: No I haven’t seen that yet, but he has said nice things about her in the past. He is really a nice guy. Not the hard ass, he pretends to be. I got to go, Neve is through. We are going to dinner with Bartholomew. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s paying.
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