SAN FRANCISCO – Ed Pereira hopes his bold outdoor event helps others catch the boxing bug.
Pereira is the founder of iVB Sport, which, along with others, helped put on last year’s Times Square card in New York City, headlined by Ryan Garcia versus Rolando Romero. Now, Pereira is putting on an ambitious outdoor show on July 11 in San Francisco at the Civic Center Plaza. The main event will be a WBO flyweight title fight between titlist Anthony Olascuaga, who will be looking to make his sixth title defense, against challenger Andy Dominguez.
Organizers are pulling out all the stops to make the card an attraction. Thursday’s introductory press conference was staged on a yacht docked in Pier 33 Alcatraz Landing. The Civic Center Plaza fight setting will happen in the shadow of City Hall. Oscar Bonifacino, an openly gay boxer, will fight in the co-feature, partly in recognition of San Francisco’s thriving LGBTQ+ community. The event goal: to beat boxing’s all-time attendance record of 135,132. Even Olascuaga, 12-1 (9 KOs), who may not be boxing’s splashiest name, is a heavy-handed belt holder whose only loss came in his sixth career fight, against an excellent then-titleholder in Kenshiro Teraji.
As plans for the show were being discussed while Thursday’s floating media event skimmed past Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge, a question was raised: Why all this?
“This is a chance to do something with a lot of people involved that is going to make waves, and it is going to do one big thing: get more people into boxing,” Pereira told BoxingScene. “I got bit by the bug, and I love boxing. I love what it does to the community. I love what it does to cities, what it does to the people, and I just want more people to get bitten by the bug.”
The event had some notable figures in attendance as promoters: Sampson Lewkowicz, Paco Damian and Christy Martin (a former titleholder who is now a promoter). But even with the backing of several industry notables, Pereira is chasing something beyond what has become the standard for present-day boxing events.
“It is all about the experience with me,” Pereira said. “I think there are real parts of boxing that have been missed lately. One of them is the showmanship.”
But is Pereira the right promoter to realize such a grand vision?
“I am not a promoter; Sampson is a promoter. I am an event creator,” Pereira said. “And I create great historic events. That is what I do, and I can fill stadiums. That is what I have always done and what I was built to do.”
Pereira, a former magazine editor and branding executive from Wales, has a two-pronged approach to rebuilding boxing’s profile: better access for fans and bigger thinking in general. Even if the Times Square event ultimately fell short of expectations, it was an irrefutably bold swing. Perhaps the San Francisco show will be a step – or even a leap – in the right direction.
“We have free tickets, paid ringside tickets, and paid ringside standing tickets,” Pereira said. “We are ranging from free to starting the price at $100 and then going up.”
That addresses access – especially as organizers aim for the attendance record, set by Tony Zale and Billy Pryor in 1941 in Milwaukee. And big thinking? Well, BoxingScene was told that the event fighters would walk through the City Hall doors en route to making their way to the ring.
“You’ve got to think about it as a great stadium event,” Pereira said. “You’re going to have a great big ring, with a big canopy, with a Jumbotron. The floor seating would be what a stadium floor seating would be like, but all in Civic Center Plaza.”
Say this for Pereira: He’s committed to the idea of boxing going big again.
Lucas Ketelle is the author of “Inside the Ropes of Boxing,” a guide for young fighters, a writer for BoxingScene and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Find him on X at @BigDogLukie.
