Growing up in Atlantic City, Larry Goldberg was at the right time and the right place to be a boxing fan.

While other kids his age were going to baseball and football games, he and his friends were taking advantage of the boxing renaissance that was underway on the boardwalk shore town. It was the late 1980s and early ‘90s, and Atlantic City venues like Trump Plaza Hotel and the Convention Center were the site of many of the top fights of that time, like Mike Tyson vs. Michael Spinks, Tommy Morrison vs. Ray Mercer and everything in between.

Donald Trump would invite the top celebrities of the time, and very few of them would ever show up. If no one was going to be sitting in those seats, Goldberg didn’t want to see them going to waste.

“Donald Trump would invite all of New York to his fights and they never came. He’d invite Cher and Michael Douglas and people like that. Around 7 p.m. before the fights started there’d be a giant stack of envelopes and they would say these star names. And alright tonight, you’re going as Cher,” remembers Goldberg.

Now, Goldberg doesn’t have to sneak into boxing shows, because he promotes them himself. The 46-year-old has been the primary driving force for New York City club show boxing through his company Boxing Insider Promotions, promoting six shows in 2023 alone, featuring the sort of competitive prospect matchmaking that is usually reserved only for televised undercards of bigger cards.

Goldberg will promote his ninth show this Thursday at Sony Hall in Midtown Manhattan. The six-bout card will be headlined by an eight-round featherweight bout between Brooklyn’s Ariel Lopez (20-1-1, 11 knockouts) and Gregorio Lebron (24-6, 18 KOs), and will also feature local prospects like Chiara Dituri, Pryce Taylor, plus Irish fighter Emmet Brennan.

If you’re looking for paid mismatches to pad an unproven fighter’s record, keep looking.

“My goal is to turn this into a regional promotion and be a positive force. I want to be the guy that takes fighters like Jacob Solis and Pryce Taylor, takes them from the amateurs and brings them to the pros. I want to offer an opportunity for a Cletus Seldin or Brian Ceballo or Heather Hardy to make a comeback. I want to be the place for good people,” said Goldberg.

Even though Goldberg has only been promoting pro fights for the past year and a half, his professional relationship with the boxing world goes back to 1997, when he founded BoxingInsider.com, one of the earliest boxing websites. Goldberg, whose background is in internet marketing, admits that he originally started the site as a way to get press credentials to events, but the site began to take off thanks in large part to the Lennox Lewis vs. Evander Holyfield undisputed heavyweight championship fights in 1999, which, due to link sharing, saw his site go from 30-40 hits per day to 32,000 hits.

Goldberg was a fixture of the New York boxing scene throughout the years on the media side, and did some marketing for former UFC champion Ken Shamrock. He managed a female boxer by the name of Shelby Walker until she died in 2006 from a drug overdose.

Goldberg, who also ran different wrestling websites throughout the years, says the idea for promoting his own events came while helping his friend promote a wrestling event in 2021. “I was just sitting there watching the craziness unfold and I was like I can do this,” said Goldberg.

Mathew Gonzalez (L) and Terell Bostic before their fight last June, with Goldberg and Lou DiBella looking on. Photo by Stephanie Trapp

Goldberg reached out to USA Boxing Metro Vice President Sonya Lamonakis to inquire about promoting one of the Ring Masters Championships events for the 2022 tournament, and he ended up having a great time with it.

“Larry has been a big supporter of the amateurs for the past few years. He sees the importance of supporting the amateurs while breaking into the pro scene the last couple years,” said Lamonakis.

Goldberg had such a great time in fact that that Heather Hardy, the former WBO women’s featherweight champion who was also his personal trainer, insisted that he promote her next fight.

“Heather basically takes me out to lunch with her friends, she looks at me and says you’re promoting my next fight,” recalls Goldberg.

There were a few snags to get past. First, Goldberg didn’t have a pro boxing promoter’s license, and Hardy was already promoted by Lou DiBella. Surely, that would be enough to get Hardy to drop the subject, right?

“‘No, I’ll set you up with Lou, you’ll promote my next fight and that’s all there is to it,’” recalls Goldberg of her response.

DiBella, who was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2020, has become a mentor and frequent collaborator with Goldberg. Goldberg got his promoter’s license and promoted his first event in October of 2022, with Hardy defeating dangerous Colombian journeywoman Calista Silgado in the main event.

“I can honestly say I don’t know where my life would be today if I hadn’t met Sonya and Heather. Heather, through the sheer force of her personality and needing a fight, is the reason that I’m doing this,” said Goldberg.

While Goldberg’s pure love for the sport has been his guiding force, he has found that being a purist in the boxing business often puts him at odds with the sport’s establishment.

“One thing I learned very early on is, nobody’s ever gonna change boxing. I spent 4-5 years sponsoring [USA Boxing Metro] and giving out t-shirts and being involved with the amateur fighters where it’s just the love of the game. I don’t see that with the boxing professionals. Yeah, there’s a few, don’t get me wrong. But on this side of the game this is all about control, this is all about owning fighters, having pieces of the fighters, selling them off,” said Goldberg.

“It’s dirty, I see things I don’t like.”

One of those things Goldberg says he has seen is that many boxers don’t realize what’s going on with their careers. Goldberg recalls one situation where he reached a deal with a boxer to fight on one of his cards, and then was told by the boxer’s manager that he would place that boxer on another promoter’s show instead unless he also made a deal for another boxer to fight on the card as well. The first boxer was unaware that this is why his fight wouldn’t be happening.

“All this time Fighter A has no idea that the reason his fight fell apart or he got short money is because the whole situation wasn’t about Fighter A, Fighter A was used as leverage for another fighter to get a deal. Every once in a while these situations come up and I make a phone call but what are you gonna do? You tell someone this and you blow the deal,” said Goldberg.

Sony Hall, where all nine of Boxing Insider Promotions’ cards have taken place. Photo by Stephanie Trapp

Goldberg also isn’t a fan of today’s climate of safe matchmaking, where the emphasis is put on preserving a fighter’s undefeated record over testing them in character-building (or character-revealing) matchups. He believes that the marketing of Floyd Mayweather Jr. and his ‘0’ has changed the way boxers and their handlers look at matchmaking.

One issue he doesn’t take exception to is the stringent medical standards imposed by the New York State Athletic Commission. New York has the strictest pre-fight licensing procedures in the country, as well as a $1 million insurance umbrella per boxer in the event of brain injuries. Those requirements dramatically increase the overhead for Goldberg’s shows, but he says it’s better than the alternative.

“The insurance is too high and the medicals are expensive. I think that every medical that we do in New York needs to be done in all 50 states. Could I love to save a little bit of money, of course. But from when you talk about fighter safety and just the boxing, I love the regulations in New York,” said Goldberg.

“I’m drowning in these medical expenses, but would you really want a fighter going in the ring and having an eye injury or brain issue? No you wouldn’t, if you would, you’re a scumbag.”

If boxing won’t be changing for him or anyone else, the least Goldberg can do is not allow it to change him. He’s already planning to expand outside of New York, having obtained his promoter’s license in his home state of New Jersey. He plans to attempt to revive Atlantic City’s club show scene, which has become a shell of its former glory during Goldberg’s childhood.

His vision is to remake the Boxing Insider site into a streaming service which showcases fighters making that leap from prospect to contender, similar to the bridge that was the ShoBox series for the previous two decades.

In the meantime, Goldberg will try not to lose his hair, or his lunch, while promoting the sport he loves.

“Boxing needs these club fights because that’s the only way you’re gonna build up to these regular fights. Last year was spent learning the business. This year, I’m gonna try to be a small, regional promotion and I’ll try to keep making it bigger and bigger,” said Goldberg.

Ryan Songalia has written for ESPN, the New York Daily News, Rappler and The Guardian, and is part of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism Class of 2020. He can be reached at [email protected].