Mark Taffet, second from right, poses with, from left, Bernard Hopkins, George Foreman and Lennox Lewis. (Photo: HBO)
By any measure, 2015 has been an exceptional year for Mark Taffet.
In May, HBO’s longtime senior vice president for sports operations and pay-per-view saw the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao megafight, aired jointly by HBO and Showtime, shatter boxing’s pay-per-view record, nearly doubling the old mark with more than 4.6 million buys and $437 million in PPV revenue.
In October, Taffet’s beloved New York Mets stunned the baseball world by making it not only to the postseason, but reaching the World Series, where they lost in five games to the Kansas City Royals.
On Nov. 21, Taffet will oversee his 190th pay-per-view event for the premium network when Puerto Rico’s Miguel Cotto and Mexico’s Canelo Alvarez step into the ring to fight for the middleweight championship at Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. It’s a fight many believe has the potential to reach 1.5 million buys.
And tonight, Taffet, long considered one of the most powerful men in boxing, will see his years of hard work, creativity and influence on the sport recognized when he is inducted into the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame. He will join, among others, presidential candidate Donald Trump and Micky Ward, best known for his great trilogy in Atlantic City with Arturo Gatti.
Taffet will be introduced by Oscar De La Hoya, whom he counts among his best friends in the business and a former PPV star who made Taffet’s job easier throughout the years.
“The fact that Oscar is flying in from Los Angeles is incredibly meaningful,” Taffet told USA TODAY Sports. “It was very gracious and generous of him. I had 13 years of an amazing experience with Oscar De La Hoya, growing up professionally with him, on the road and in the arenas during his historic career. I developed a friendship with him that’s unlike most others. It’s something I will have with me my whole life.”
Taffet has been HBO’s czar of pay-per-view as long as PPV has been around. He oversaw the first PPV in 1991 between George Foreman and Evander Holyfield at Trump Plaza and Convention Hall in Atlantic City on TVKO, then HBO’s pay-per-view arm.
“It was the night pay-per-view was born,” Taffet said, “generating 1.4 million buys and proving that for the right fights, pay-per-view could be a tremendous revenue generator.”
One of his most memorable events was Holyfield-Riddick Bowe II in 1993 at Caesars Palace’s great outdoor arena in Las Vegas. It’s better known as the “Fan Man” fight, which was interrupted by a man parachuting into the ring.
“I remember sitting ringside with my wife, who looked up and said, ‘What is that overhead? Someone seems to be circling and they’re coming closer.’ We weren’t sure what it was,” Taffet said. “And a short time later my wife screamed, ‘He’s coming right at us!’”
The parachute flew under the canopy and got caught in the ropes in the ring, delaying the fight 45 minutes.
“We were getting close to the point of how much time we had left on our satellite delivering signals to PPV systems across the country. And we realized that if the fight didn’t start within a few minutes and it went 12 rounds, that fans who purchased the PPV wouldn’t see the conclusion. With the help of (ring announcer) Michael Buffer, who pleaded with people to calm down and sit down and allow the ring to be cleared and order to be restored, we got the fight to continue in time and got a classic fight in what became a trilogy.”
Another of his most memorable events was the Lennox Lewis-Mike Tyson debacle in Memphis in 2002. It was the first and only other time HBO, which had Lewis, and Showtime, which had Tyson, collaborated on a PPV event.
“The fight was supposed to have happened six months earlier and the press conference in New York resulted in a melee,” Taffet said. “The fight had to be rescheduled, and the only jurisdiction that would stage it was Memphis, where the mayor, a former Golden Gloves champion named Willie Herenton, opened his arms and allowed that fight to take place. It turned into an incredible event, and one of the biggest fights of all time, generating just under 2 million buys and $112 million in PPV revenue.”
The most emotional event, he recalled, took place in September 2001 in the finals of the Middleweight World Championship series with Don King at Madison Square Garden. That fight was scheduled to take place on Sept. 15 between Bernard Hopkins and Felix “Tito” Trinidad. But after 9-11, the fight was rescheduled for Sept. 29.
“It was the first major sporting event to take place in New York City after 9-11,” Taffet said. “The security we had for that fight was like nothing we had ever experienced.
“A group of about 25 New York firefighters entered the arena during an undercard bout, and the crowd stood and erupted into one of the loudest and most emotional cheers I ever heard in my life, to a point where the action stopped in the ring momentarily. Our hearts were in our throats … Then Hopkins went on to an incredible victory over Trinidad that launched his career to previously unheard-of levels, and resulted in the Bernard Hopkins that fans love today.
“The emotion was pent up and unleashed that night inside that magnificent building in a way I had never experienced before and probably never will again.”
The numbers Taffet has amassed as HBO’s PPV boss during the last 25 years are staggering: 189 PPV fights that generated 65 million buys and $3.6 billion in revenue. He’s seen the growth in PPV households go from 16 million in 1991 to more than 100 million today.
One of his most rewarding accomplishments, he says, dates to 1993 and a conversation he had with Top Rank chairman and Hall of Fame promoter Bob Arum.
“We knew at the time that the Latino marketplace was exploding,” Taffet said. “Lighter weight fighters had not had a lot of opportunities to showcase their talents on television, yet they had tremendous fan following, particularly among Latino fans.”
In 1993, HBO televised the first of three fights between light flyweight champs Michael Carbajal and Humberto “Chiquita” Gonzalez, and the fight one generated 165,000 buys. Each of the fighters made $1 million, according to Taffet. “It was the first time those fighters in the lighter weight classes had earned that much money,” he added.
“Pay-per-view opened the door for a lot of fighters in lighter weight classes to earn the kind of money that only the biggest fighters, both in stature and marquee value, had been able to earn. It’s from the Carbajal-Gonzalez trilogy that trilogies like Pacquiao-Erik Morales and Marco Antonio Barrera-Morales came to be. It’s a rich part of the sports history and I’m proud to have been a part of that.”
Taffet’s career has spanned several eras in boxing — the Holyfield-Lewis-Tyson era of heavyweights that transitioned to the era of De La Hoya, followed by the Mayweather-Pacquiao era, which was punctuated by the richest fight of all time, Mayweather-Pacquiao on May 2. Mayweather retired undefeated after his fight in September against Andre Berto.
“We’re at another great transitional period right now and it’s very exciting,” Taffet said, “to be able to work with fighters like Gennady Golovkin, Sergey Kovalev, Andre Ward, Terence Crawford, Canelo Alvarez and see another great era unfolding right before our eyes. It keeps me young and keeps me energized every day.
“When boxing gets it right, there’s nothing in the entire landscape of sport that comes close to it. There’s nothing like the one-on-one, gladiator vs. gladiator drama that boxing provides, and that’s why when Michael Buffer stands in the middle of the ring and says “Let’s get ready to rumble!!” it is a moment for the fans like no other in sport.”
Taffet, who has a BA in economics from Rutgers and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, says he was not as much a big boxing fan as a kid as he was a fan of the biggest fights.
“I used to watch the big fights with my dad. I was a tremendous sports fan, and big fights fit right into my portfolio,” said Taffet, who grew up in Colonia, N.J. and now lives in Montville. “I never dreamed of working in the sport, and the reality of what I’ve been allowed to do has surpassed any dream I ever had.”
De La Hoya said Taffet was the right man for the job he worked his way up to at HBO in 1991.
“As much as I enjoyed working with Mark while I was a fighter, it wasn’t until I became a promoter that I got to see first-hand Mark’s incredible knowledge of boxing and his skill in bringing the sport to millions of fans across the globe,” De La Hoya told USA TODAY Sports. “Mark represents everything that is right about boxing today — he cares about the health and welfare of the fighters; wants to see the best fight the best, and is committed to growing the sport to new audiences.”
Boxing’s ever expanding global reach, Taffet says, has been aided by the development of the internet and social media, which has made the world a smaller place. The breadth of stars and the locations they come from are a reflection of that, and will play out before millions on boxing’s biggest stage next weekend.
“Cotto-Canelo is a true pay-per-view mega-fight, featuring not only two champions and two superstars, but two fighters who carry their nations on their backs every time they step into the ring,” Taffet says. “They fight for their fans more than they fight for themselves, so the fans know they can expect a great fight and we expect they will support the fight in big numbers.
“The arena will be full of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans there to cheer their heroes and there will be an emotional intensity felt right through the TV sets into the living rooms of America. . . . And it has the potential to lead us into the next generation of the sport in a big way.”