DuBoef originally joined the Top Rank staff in 1993 and was officially named president in '04GETTY IMAGES
Top Rank President TODD DUBOEF has been on the road for almost two weeks straight, which means this weekend is all about taking advantage of the outdoor life with his family in Aspen. DuBoef will keep a close eye on his organization's Saturday night ESPN card, but after a long stint in N.Y. ahead of MICK CONLAN's win at MSG he's ready to decompress with the wife and kids back home. DuBoef, who negotiated Top Rank's seven-year deal with ESPN last year, took THE DAILY through his weekend agenda, what drew he and his family to Aspen and how he spends a typical fight weekend on-site.
HOME COOKING: On a typical work week when I don't attend the fights, I come home to the family on either Thursday night or Friday morning. Then we spend the weekend together, I drop the kids off at school Monday morning and jump on a plane to wherever the hell I have to go. It's paradise in Aspen. We hit the ski slopes, hike, go mountain-biking, you name it. It’s very therapeutic. You’re tucked away in nature. That said there can be some difficulties getting there. It’s almost like "PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES" figuring out how to get home each weekend. There’s no direct flights from Las Vegas and you typically have to go through Denver and see how the flights are there. Bottom-line is I book a lot of rental cars, which can take a while depending on how much snow is coming down. I was born in Vegas, but ever since I was 5 years old, we’d always go on skiing trips. I was also a hockey player, and in the summers, I’d go to Aspen for a hockey camp. Then when my wife and I got married we revisited a few times in the summer. We bought a second home there about twelve years ago, and shortly after we decided to make it our actual home base.
WHAT A WORK WEEKEND LOOKS LIKE: Top Rank Founder & CEO BOB ARUM and I coordinate our schedules. I usually make sure one of the two of us does the weekend’s press conference. Last week it was on Friday ahead of the Sunday fight and I handled that one. I don’t necessarily talk to all the managers and the fighters all the time like my matchmakers do. There’s a lot of handling the relationship side of the business when I’m on-site. I’ll meet with a lot of outside folks, but also my staff to check on ticket sales, in-arena production, the customer experience etc. With ESPN we’re really trying to capture elements of the fight that haven’t been seen before. One is the walkout. If you go to a big fight, you feel the energy of that moment. My personal thing is that most networks have missed that. This past weekend ESPN did a fantastic job with fans singing Irish songs at MSG, it came across great. That’s an element we’ll deal with. I’ll also spend plenty of one-on-one time with the press to keep that dialogue open. That’s largely on the day of the presser. The weigh-in is more of a relaxed day with production meetings going on. The networks meet with all the fighters, but they're all struggling to make weight and are in shitty moods, so they don’t get a whole lot out of them. Then I’m really just staying in tune with my staff on what we expect the pace of the fight night to be like.
FIGHT NIGHT SUPERSTITION? Some of these fights go so long into the night, I have to make sure I eat before I head to the venue. Otherwise I’m starving and end up eating at 2:00am. Something crazy I used to do? Early in my career I had this classification of what I would wear based on the fight. Big pay-per-view? I wore a suit. A middle of the road bout? I’d go jeans and sports coat. How significant the fight was determined how I dressed. That was probably my one superstition.
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