There isn’t much that Alex Barbosa hasn’t done in the world of boxing.
The 41-year-old from Cherry Hill, New Jersey has been a boxer - both pro and amateur - as well as a matchmaker, gym owner, promoter and even a ring announcer.
While he’s done just about everything outside of officiating, Barbosa says there’s nothing like the thrill of promoting his own shows.
Barbosa’s R&B Promotions will host its 14th event this Saturday at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The event will take place at the smaller Sound Waves room. However - like a boxing prospect moving from the four-round to the six-round level - Barbosa’s company will be moving into Hard Rock’s 3,000-seat Mark G. Etess Arena for their next show on November 22.
Boxing promotions are a labor of love for Barbosa. While most promoters are content to free up their time by hiring outside matchmakers, Barbosa prefers to personally match the fights up himself.
“Everything that I do in my life, I have to have my stamp on it,” Barbosa told BoxingScene. “If I don't have my fingerprints on something that's going to represent what I'm doing, I don't necessarily know how I feel about being involved with it. Each of my shows have my DNA on it, because the fights are all designed to build guys.
“I don't mean like, just a guy selling tickets and we’re trying to build him up and give him a guy that doesn't belong in there with him. I don't care about that. I care about building the fighter so that he's preparing for the next level.”
Saturday’s show is headlined by bantamweight Emmanuel “Salserito” Rodriguez, 15-2 (8 KOs), who is seeking to rebound from a decision loss to Khalid Twaiti as he faces Connor Adaway, 8-2-1 (3 KOs), of Plymouth, England. There is also an interesting six-round junior welterweight bout between Daniel Gonzalez, 6-1 (6 KOs), of Iselin, New Jersey and Chicago’s Rani Jalomo, 7-0 (4 KOs).
Local prospects like Justin Penaranda, Richard Johnson and Muhammad Noori are also slated for action.
“We're building a little bit of a boxing hot bed over there,” said Barbosa, who is promoting his third show at Hard Rock. “I'm trying to keep the brand building with those kind of 50/50 fights where you don't know who's gonna win.
“You can't just go in there and be like, ‘This corner is gonna kill that corner.’”
From the outside looking in, Barbosa’s journey into boxing seemed less inevitable than it appears in hindsight.
A second-generation boxer, Barbosa’s father was a pro boxer, as was his brother, Jesus. It wasn’t until Barbosa was 24 that he first put on a pair of gloves.
“I was the college kid. I was always supposed to avoid boxing and not fight,” said Barbosa, who double majored in political science and criminal justice at Temple University.
Barbosa had a crash education in boxing shortly after college, when his younger brother came to live with him. He functioned essentially as his trainer and manager, handling the minutiae of his career.
From there, Barbosa became curious about the sport as well and eventually stepped into the ring.
Barbosa had four amateur bouts, then turned pro in 2011. He won his first four fights before concluding his career in 2018 with a 6-3-1 record. As an unsigned boxer, he experienced firsthand the grind of selling tickets to finance his own career and trying to market himself, which he now observes as the person hosting the show.
While pursuing a boxing career, Barbosa was also working as a trainer at a local LA Boxing franchise, which later became UFC Gym. He worked his way up to assistant manager, then general manager, before buying the gym in 2018 and rebranding it TKO Fitness.
Today, the gym is one of the most respected in the Philadelphia area.
Former WBA featherweight titleholder Raymond Ford trained out of there for most of his career before moving to Houston, and former IBF junior lightweight titleholder Tevin Farmer still calls it home to this day. Other boxers like “Salserito” Rodriguez, former secondary titlist Jason Sosa and Thomas ‘Cornflake’ LaManna have also prepared for fights there throughout the years.
When an injury kept him out of the ring for a prolonged period, Barbosa found a way to stay close to the action by becoming a ring announcer. He called his first show in May 2014, and eventually worked for most of the local promotions, including Rising Star Promotions, King’s Promotions and Real Deal Promotions, where he became known as ‘The Fighting Ring Announcer.’
“I've had some cool experiences with ring announcing, but it's not really where my heart's at,” admits Barbosa. “I like being on the other side of the fence. I really do like matchmaking. Matchmaking is a science, it's an art. It’ll also test your patience, like having a toddler will.
“Today's boxing is not the same. Everybody is not necessarily willing to sign up to be challenged. Guys want fights that they know they're gonna win. If they don't know they're gonna win it they'll strategically say no without saying no by demanding things that are out the ordinary, whether it's additional stupid shit, like additional hotel rooms or thousands of dollars more than they've ever made.”
Just like mastering a skill in the boxing gym, Barbosa believes that repetition is the key to success with promoting boxing events. He hopes to make a strong statement with a sellout on Saturday before planning even bigger events moving forward.
“I'm blessed and lucky that this is show number 14,” said Barbosa. “And then when we get past this one, show number 15 is in a big arena with 3,000 seats and it's upward and onward from there.”
Ryan Songalia is a reporter and editor for BoxingScene.com and has written for ESPN, the New York Daily News, Rappler, The Guardian, Vice and The Ring magazine. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at ryansongalia@gmail.com or on Twitter at @ryansongalia.