The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

Due to financial constraints, promoter/boxer D’Angelo Swaby and his newly formed Hrizan Sports Promotions team were forced to reduce the four scheduled virtual professional boxing matches to two exhibition bouts.

But despite not delivering the key four-round matches that counted towards the boxers’ records on the much anticipated “Hot Blooded, Hot Tempered Boxing At Its Best” pay-per-view on LiveSportscaster.com, Swaby said he was pleased with what transpired.

“It went well. It went really, really well,” Swaby said. “In fact the persons who watched it live online said they were pleased with this being the first live stream boxing event to be held in the Bahamas. It was historic.”

The two matches staged were reduced to exhibitions with no winners or losers declared. One fight featured Tyrone Oliver versus Ronald Joseph and the other saw Swaby take on David Wallace.

Additionally, during the show, Swaby’s company was able to showcase some past performances of former Bahamian Commonwealth champions Gemeo Brennen, Ray Minus Jr, Stevie ‘the Heat’ Larrimore and Jermaine ‘Choo Choo’ Mackey.

“A lot of people have never seen some of these guys fight, but we were able to get some excerpts from their fights and so we were able to pay homage to them and to showcase some posters of them,” Swaby said.

“People in my generation would have never seen Gemeo Brennen when he fought Hurricane Carter, who starred in the movie, Hurricane Carter with Denzel Washington. So it went great with the physical fights of the current fighters and the action video presentations of the past fighters.”

Now with the introductory pay-per-view showing behind him, Swaby said the company will be looking at putting on another show sometime in December. Hopefully, they would have ironed out the knits that prevented them from staging the four fights that actually count on the fighters’ win-loss records.

Although they had four bouts originally lined up, it was reduced to three after Rashield Williams got the opportunity to fight in Florida where he won his match just a week before the show. Oliver said it was a little too late to get a replacement, so his fight was called off.

Then one of the international fighters couldn’t make it and only being informed a few days before the show, Swaby said they had to reduce the card to two. To make matters worse, he said their financial support didn’t come through in time to meet their obligations to the Bahamas Boxing Commission, so they could only put on the exhibition fights.

“All fights I want to be sanctioned fights for record, but not Bahamians fighting each other on my card,” he said. “It will always be a Bahamian versus a foreigner for their record unless there is an issue with the foreign fighter coming in,” he said.

“So I’m happy with how it turned out. It was a good premiere for what is to come. Yeah, it was an exhibition, but it showed the fans the skill level of the fighters here in the Bahamas. So I’m really excited about what happened.”

Hopefully the next time, Swaby promised that the fans will get their money’s worth with actual fights that count on each opponent’s win-loss record.