Llinas and Salita each are aiming to promote several boxing cards this year. What it is going to take is that next superstar that will develop from this, I like to call it a farm league.” “That just goes to show that people are hungry for boxing. “That’s definitely the ultimate goal, to be at Little Caesars and be able to fill that arena the way we fill this consistently,” Llinas said backstage at the MotorCity Casino. “For me, winning in life is helping other kids be successful in life,” Harrison said.Ī pair of promoters, Carlos Llinas and Dmitriy Salita, are pushing the sport in the Detroit area with a periodic series of bouts in smaller venues in hopes of bringing it back to the masses. The fights at Olympia Stadium and Cobo Arena, where the Red Wings and Pistons once played, were legendary for decades.īy the time Hearns was done throwing his feared right hand in 2006, the city had taken so many blows of its own over the decades that its population was knocked out of the country’s top 20 towns. When Louis started his career in the late 1930s and boxed for more than a decade, Detroit had more than 1.5 million residents and was the fourth or fifth-largest city in the United States, a foundational cradle of the nation’s automaking industry. Fighters from around the world, including former heavyweight champions Joe Frazier and Wladimir Klitschko, were schooled by Detroit-based trainers Eddie Futch and Steward. Joe Louis, a famed boxer who moved to the Motor City as a child, Sugar Ray Robinson and Hearns represented the city as world champions and are regarded as all-time greats. “Hopefully, he will win this weekend to help put him on the map with more people.” “It’s so sad that Tony doesn’t have opportunities here because he’s an accomplished fighter,” said Jackie Kallen, who was Hearns’ publicist and managed former champion and Michigan native James Toney.

The fighter known as Superbad, a nickanme Steward gave him, handed Jermell Charlo his only loss and took his 154-pound title in New York in 2018, then lost the championship in Canada a year later in an 11-round rematch. While Harrison has trained in Detroit at his own gym, he has been forced to go from coast to coast and other countries to compete.

Boxing at motor city casino