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Boxing Scene Changes Hands, Staff

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Boxing Scene Changes Hands, Staff

The name is the same but the Scene has changed.

The Rick Reeno-led Boxing Scene, seen as the No 1 boxing news website, has changed ownership and management and personnel.

You might have noticed today if you went to get your fill of content from the likes of Keith Idec, Jake Donovan and the like, and you saw bylines less familiar to you.

ProBox, the Garry Jonas led outfit which operates out of Plant City, Florida, owns Boxing Scene, as of Friday, or at least that’s when wholesale changes appeared on the site which no longer boasts the talents of Reeno, who stayed on as editor after selling his stake to CBS Digital.

Friday, Feb 16 was the last day of the Rick Reeno BS era

The platform/publication became less useful when Paramount went cost cutting after acquisitions and mergers and gave word to the Showtime arm of the corporation to shut down the sports shop.

They did so to close out 2023, part of a wave of changes hitting the pro boxing scene.

Of changes, it remains to be seen where Reeno, Idec and others, who have publicly announced their change in vocational status.

Word started spreading about the Boxing Scene ownership shift

Note: I don’t really have a dog in this hunt, beyond the fact that I’ve written some in the past for BS. Also, I worked at ProBox from Dec. 2021 until late July 2022, and so I have insight, to a degree, on the purchase by “serial entrepreneur” Jonas.

He’s an interesting person. Personality and behavior aside, his efforts since jumping back into boxing after funding Mike Tyson Promotions until Al Haymon’s 2014-2015 emergence forced his exit have been welcomed by the boxing hardcores who have enjoyed the midweek fare offered for a nice price.

He’s given a stable home to the best analyst in the biz, Paul Malignaggi.

Jonas likes to control his destiny, shall we say, and at times does so in a manner which had me realizing at my day of hire that I was in a Billy Martin role and best be knowing I was dealing with a George Steinbrenner sort.

Despite having support staff like the executive producer of “The Jimmy Kimmel  Show” on hand, he might listen to input and he then mulls and then makes a move, mulls more and changes his mind.

Point being, he hires and fires a lot, so one might expect that the “new” Boxing Scene will look different in a week, or month, or whenever he decides to pull the lever.

Lots of talent is now looking at new opportunities. Props to Breadman, for being transparent!

We shall see who might be tasked with steering the ship, which now features a radically tilted content shift toward UK-centric stories.

Will that tilt continue? What portion of the daily fare will be ProBox centric?

Will the ProBox promotional side continue to grow, and will Boxing Scene be altered so it’s a platform to show “ProBox” fights?

That’s for Jonas to show, if not tell.

I saw on Friday an announcement video from Team ProBox which touted the play, and wondered if Boxing Scene as we’ve known it would stay to form.

Glaser has been posting exclusives. Yeah, it’s a different world out here in the “sports journalism” fields…

I wasn’t sure how to read in to the handover to the new admin coming on “news dump” Friday.

Maybe that was wise, because people can sometimes react harshly to change, especially when something they like gets changed.

As the weekend progressed, I didn’t hear back from Reeno. But staff, now ex staff, shared:

Looking at reaction on X, there is some critical chatter ricocheting.

Reaction to changes at Boxing Scene after purchase by ProBox
There’s also plenty of fans of the folks who’ve done their part in building the BS brand tagging talent and wishing them well with future endeavors, while promising to follow those content creators on whatever platform they might pivot to.

Disclosure: This website draws eyeballs from same pool BS has for 21 years

Founder/editor Michael Woods got addicted to boxing in 1990, when Buster Douglas shocked the world with his demolition of the then-impregnable Mike Tyson. The Brooklyn-based journalist has covered the sport since for ESPN The Magazine, ESPN.com, Bad Left Hook and RING. His journalism career started with NY Newsday in 1999. Michael Woods is also an accomplished blow by blow and color man, having done work for Top Rank, DiBella Entertainment, EPIX, and for Facebook Fightnight Live, since 2017.