Examining Elite Boxing Promotion’s Pandemic Response Five Years Later

WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic, Forcing Top Rank to Pause

“In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths, and the number of affected countries climb even higher,” WHO Director-General Tedros Ahadnom Ghebreyesus began. “WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock and we are deeply concerned by both the alarming levels of severity and the alarming levels of inaction. We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.”

On the evening of March 11, 2020, a scheduled NBA game between the Utah Jazz and Oklahoma City Thunder was first delayed and ultimately postponed after Jazz center Rudy Gobert became the first athlete in American sports to test positive for the virus. Not long after the postponement was official, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver made the move to suspend play after that night’s games concluded.

The next day, all NCAA basketball conference tournaments yet to crown a champion were ordered canceled, including the Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden. Top Rank later moved to cancel their planned event for the following Saturday. All sports were on hiatus. The planned Top Rank card that weekend at The Theater would have featured Shakur Stevenson fighting Miguel Marriaga for the WBO Featherweight Championship in the main event of the evening.

Nevada State Athletic Commission Clears Way for Top Rank’s Return

Top Rank fell silent until late May of 2020. After the UFC held a weeklong residency in Jacksonville, FL beginning with a rescheduled UFC 249, the Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) moved to cease its moratorium on competitive violence later the same month.

With United States rightsholder ESPN mostly airing archival presentations for weeks in the wake of the sports shutdown, Top Rank was given a twice-weekly slot on primetime television. From early June to late July, right before the abbreviated and revised 2020 Major League Baseball season began, Top Rank was shown on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8 pm ET/ 5 pm PT.

For the majority of the 2020 schedule of events, Top Rank made its temporary home in a makeshift arena from the MGM Grand’s conference room with no fans in attendance and blow-by-blow commentator Joe Tessitore calling fights from a studio on ESPN’s campus. When other team-competitive sports returned, including an on-time college football season, Top Rank eventually moved back to its customary Saturday night timeslot, with the fights moving to ESPN+ via streaming media.

COVID-19 Era Cards Produced Exciting Stuff for Top Rank

Even though spectators were barred from coming to the events, Top Rank put on some wonderful shows nonetheless during the pandemic. It was during this period that Edgar Berlanga was still on his impressive streak of knocking opponents out before the bell tolled to end the first round of the fight.

Eric Moon walked into the ring on a Tuesday night on a Top Rank Boxing on ESPN show against Berlanga. Moon quickly learned of Berlanga’s power, getting stopped in only a minute and two seconds.

COVID-19 was a challenging time for the world over. While the responses of world leaders varied, the collective response of combat sports organizations was the same: Excellent. Top Rank worked their hardest with NSAC and with departing United States rightsholder ESPN to put on a high-quality product consistently and with minimal disruption to the calendar.

While Top Rank’s next media destination after its July 26 finale on ESPN from The Theatre at Madison Square Garden is not definitively known at press time, there’s one certainty, when the chips were down during the pandemic, the promotion’s hand came up aces.