Boxings Great Magazine Hope

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"Kappa put no money into us," Santoliquito says. "We were strictly a low-budget operation. Our entire sales staff was one person." This summer, with a print run of 100,000 and an unaudited circulation of a great deal less than that, the title lost its only major advertiser, the sporting-equipment maker Everlast.

Then De La Hoya stepped into the ring with the Ring.

Golden Boy hopes to restore the publication to eminence and increase its measly online presence. There’s talk of partnering with Yahoo to launch a boxing portal that would stream video of major bouts. An advertising agency has been hired. The plan is to cross-promote the Ring with some of the mainstream sponsors De La Hoya has brought to the sport, including Southwest Airlines and Tecate beer.

It’s unclear whether Golden Boy is more interested in the magazine itself or in the well-established brand, which Kappa never really tried to license or expand.

"It may be that our name still has cachet," Santoliquito concedes.

The spinoffs De La Hoya is considering range from sportswear to sporting goods. In contrast, Everlast has attached its name to cosmetics, jewelry, watches, nutrition bars, fragrances—and even an Everlast condom.

With all the talk of turning the Ring into a market leader, at least one promoter sees cracks forming in the journalistic firewall between Golden Boy and the magazine’s editorial staff. The Ring logo, the promoter notes, now appears on the mats used in the televised bouts that Golden Boy promotes. "That’s more than a little over the line," the promoter says.

He also points out that the Ring didn’t publish any of the racy photographs of De La Hoya that ran last September in the New York tabloids. The snapshots, which appear to show the 34-year-old athlete wearing heels, a wig, and a fishnet bodysuit, were taken by a stripper in a Philadelphia hotel room.

"If Don King were photographed in lingerie, don’t you think the picture would appear in the Ring?” the promoter asks. "The fact that the Ring wouldn’t show Oscar in drag tells me everything I need to know about the magazine."

To its credit, the Ring did run two news items about the photos, one of which detailed a lawsuit the stripper filed against De La Hoya, accusing him of "fraud, defamation, and infliction of emotional distress." The plaintiff has since signed an affidavit stating that the images had been “altered” by an unnamed third party, who stole them from her camera.

"Those shots were obviously doctored," Santoliquito says. "No way the legs in those fishnets were Oscar’s. I’ve seen his, and they’re much hairier."

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