International Toughman Competition Injects Big Dollars into Local Economy

Enable frames

Blockbuster in Bay City -

International Toughman Competition Injects 
Big Dollars into Local Economy

By Mark Leffler

When she was just a little girl of five, Wendy's Dad got into an

argument with a buddy who thought his five-year-old son was pretty tough.

"My daughter's pretty tough, too," Wendy's Dad bragged. One thing led to

another and they laced some boxing gloves on the kids.

Wendy laid the kid out.

Wendy Dore is the President of AdoreAble Promotions, Inc. and her proud

father is Art Dore, who created The Original Toughman Contest. The Toughman

extravaganza has grown faster than a WWF heel on steroids, experiencing a

big boost due to its appearances on FX network and Fox Sports.

Photo by Santo Fabio

Now, after stints in major venues all over the United States, The Toughman

World Championship returns to it's Tri-City roots like a pissed off

prodigal son with a bloody nose.

Fox Sports will tape the event, which will be held at the Bay County Arena

on March 23rd and 24th, eventually airing four hours of edited highlights

from the two-day event. Fox is also expected to drop about a million

dollars into the local economy during their production.

Cha-ching.

Fox expects "The Toughman World Championship Series" will bring their

highest ratings yet. They've made a special arrangement with NASCAR to lead

into the World Championship telecast. The semi-finals will be seen April

20th and 27th with the World Finals aired on May 4th, following the 2001

NASCAR Series on Fox Networks.

Local boxing enthusiasts jump in the air pumping their arms shouting

"WHOO-HOO", like Homer Simpson after a six-pack or two of Miller Lite

(official sponsor of the event). But many others (mothers, perhaps) cringe

at the thought. So a little information for the uninitiated:

Fighters compete in three 60 second rounds, unlike the twelve to fifteen

rounds professional boxers endure. All Toughman contestants wear specially

designed headgear, mouthpieces, groin protectors (gulp) and sixteen ounce

gloves. Pro boxers gloves are only twelve ounces.

Wendy Dore claims that the shorter rounds and larger gloves (like the one's

professional boxers spar with to reduce training injuries) were adopted

after looking at studies that showed most head injuries occur during later

rounds, after dozens and dozens of haymakers.

Murray Southerland, a Toughman referee and former I.B.F. and U.S.B.A. Super

Middleweight Champion says "The Original Toughman Contest has the strictest

safety regulations and the best safety record among all forms of boxing,

including amateur and professional boxing, and I've been involved in all of

them."

And it's a damn good thing, because the Marquis of Queensbury might have a

stroke after seeing how the sweet science of the squared ring looks as

practiced by the likes of the 6', 313 lb. Butterbean (yes, that's his legal

name), or Mr. T, the 1980 and '81 Chicago Toughman Champion. "That stands

for tough to the bad guys and tender to the women and children."

Take the get-rich-quick appeal of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" and

crossbreed it with an alcohol fueled streetbrawl and you have two of the

main ingredients of the Original Toughman Contest's appeal.

Photo by Santo Fabio

And oh yeah, ring girls in thongs.

Thirty-two fighters (16 Light Heavyweights and 16 Heavyweights) compete for a $50,000 top prize. The loser of the championship fight walks away with
$5,000. The rest of the losers don't even walk away with matching steak knives. Some might hitchhike home.

Alaska native Jamie Bailey, who moved here last September to train full time for the championship, explains there's no comparison between professional boxing tactics and what it takes to win the Toughman.

"I'm just concentrating on one minute rounds. They're burnout rounds. It's a lot more like streetfighting. You just have to hit and hit and keep going. You can't box ... try to figure the other guy out. It's really the closest thing to a street fight."

But Bailey still insists he's comfortable with the safety precautions, and trusts the referees while respecting the judges, most of whom are former boxers themselves. "They'll stop it if they think someone's getting hurt. These are common man fighters, not professionals, and they really do everything they can to make it an even playing field."

Evolution of a Phenomenon

The Original Toughman Contest (yes, it's a mouthful, but that's the

official copyrighted nameŠmore about that later) has come a long way since

Art Dore launched it 22 years ago.

Dore, who is the CEO or Dore & Associates Contracting, is also a former

Golden Gloves boxer. While he hung up his gloves when he started his

contracting business, his love of the sport remained and he formed the Dore

Boxing Club and began promoting fights.

As the legend goes, he got tired of hearing spectators claim that they

could do as well as the guys in the ring. So Dore and Dean Oswald rented a

local arena and decided to let the hometown guys - total amateurs - take

their best shot.

Family, friends and fans stood in line for over an hour in snow and

two-degree weather for tickets. The first Toughman Contest was a standing

room only sell out both nights, as was the following contest in Marquette,

Michigan.

Hollywood has always had a knack for capitalizing on pop culture

phenomenons, and in 1984 20th Century Fox produced "Tough Enough", a movie

starring Dennis Quaid as a fighter determined to win the Toughman

championship.

Wendy Dore points out that the earliest contests featured three 2-minute

rounds and the fighters wore the smaller twelve-ounce gloves. Within two

years they refined the format, going to the larger gloves, among other

changes. "The bigger gloves dissipate the force of the punches. They're the

same ones that the pros train with."

While she of course grew up around her father's interest in boxing, Wendy

has only been working full time with the company the past ten years. When

Joseph Goldring, the Operations Manager, who Wendy credits with "really

growing the business," retired, Wendy stepped in. It was 1992 and she was

getting tired of working with payrolls, so she took over promoting the

events and eventually became President of AdoreAble Promotions when Art

sold the business to his seven children. Jason Dore is the Treasurer and

brothers Ed and Art Jr. also announce events, as does Wendy's husband Jim.

She especially enjoys traveling around the country, meeting the locals that

produce and promote the local Toughman contests. "There's a network in

every town," she says of people who sell tickets and put up posters. Some

of her favorite Toughman cities are Sarasota, Florida, Asheville, North

Carolina, and Seattle, Washington.

In the near future Wendy will have a chance to visit England, as the Brits

inaugurate their own Toughman Contest. An English boxing promoter called

after seeing the FX show on the English network B-Sky-B. He flew to the

States to meet the Dores and learn how to stage the contest. And on April

27th and 28th 32 guys with attitudes as bad as their teeth will compete in

Doncaster, England. Maybe Chuck Wepner will sing "God Save The Queen".

Toughman has truly gone international thanks to the added exposure of the

FX and B-Sky-B telecasts. The FX shows began in October of 1998. Wendy sent

letters out to a whole slew of syndication companies and networks, touting

the success and appeal of Toughman.

She got ten letters back. One group, Litton Syndication out of South

Carolina flew in for an event and loved what they saw: an event with all

the glitz and glamour of WWF, but real.

With success have come the usual attempts to imitate, or in some cases

outright steal, the name and format of The Original Toughman Contest.

AdoreAble Production has a team of lawyers who concentrate on protecting

the franchise.

It's gotten worse in the past five years, Dore says, with all kinds of

Tuffman, Badman, Meanman, etc.... contests popping up as fast as psychic

hotlines, with almost as much integrity.

Toughman also has a website, launched two years ago and updated frequently,

at www.toughmancontest.com. There is a page where prospective fighters can

register their information, which is then entered into a database. Wendy

points out that this is very helpful for the company since they can pull up

all the contestants from a particular zip code, say in Nashville, and see

how much interest there is. The website also presents up to date

information on upcoming Toughman contests around the country.

For Toughman enthusiasts who still can't get enough, Sega Genesis has a

"Toughman Contest" video game. It features 24 colorful Toughman fighters

and custom multi-player tournaments. Wrapped with the latest Eminem CD it

makes a swell stocking stuffer.

Also, the video "Best of Toughman" is available at Blockbuster Video

nationwide.

(For more information contact AdoreAble Promotions, Inc. at 517-684-8410 or

toll-free at 888-868-4462. Visit their website at www.toughmancontest.com

or email them at apipro@concentric.net. Write them at P.O. Box 9, Bay City,

MI, 48707)

TOUGHMAN  TRIVIA

o  Toughman founder Art Dore still serves as ring announcer for many of the

shows.

o More than 75,000 contestants have competed in the Toughman and Toughwoman

contests since it started in 1979. Toughman represents almost 1/3 of all

boxing events in America.

o Mr. T, Tommy Morrison, female boxer Christy Martin (who was featured on

the cover of Sports Illustrated) and Butterbean, King of the four rounders,

all got their start with the Toughman/Toughwoman contest.

o  Three judges use the standard boxing ten point system scoring each bout.

No biting, kicking or grappling is allowed. Standard rules are enforced by

licensed referees.

o Professional fighters are not allowed to compete in Toughman Contests.

o  Any fighter with more than five sanctioned amateur  wins in the last

five years is ineligible to compete in Toughman.

o Butterbean now fights pro and has a record of 55 wins, 1 loss and 2

draws. Asked why he turned pro, he replies "Because Mike Tyson won't fight

in a Toughman Contest."

o Demographic studies show that the National Event Audience is 80% male and

20% female.

o  The first Toughman World Championship was held in the Silverdome in

Detroit and drew 30,000 fans.

Jaime Bailey -

'Is He Tough Enough'

When Jaime Bailey was 15 years old he went to the movies with his

friends and saw "Tough Enough." He joked with his friends about how cool it

would be to win the Toughman Contest. In 1994 the Toughman Contest came to

his hometown of Wasilla, Alaska.

There was just one hitch. In Alaska you must be 21 to fight. Bailey was 21.

So, well, er, he kinda forged his ID. He was 20 years old, weighed 200

pounds and had never put boxing gloves on in his life. He won, beating

Two-Tone Tony, a 260 lb. heavyweight.

"I knew I was in great shape. I used to cut wood in the summertime," he says.

Two years later he won the Toughman Contest again. When he married,

however, he decided that boxing and starting a family really didn't mix.

But after getting divorced and mourning the death of his best friend, Cody

Koch, who died in a confrontation with bouncers outside a Tri-city bar,

Bailey decided to give the Toughman Championship another shot.

"I was 27, making $3,000 a month working excavation but it was the middle

of the summer and I decided I was just tired of my life."

So he loaded up his truck and drove four days straight to Bay City,

arriving with no advance notice at the door of Art Dore's business and

announced that he was going to win the Toughman. After winning the local

contest, he settled down to train full time for the Toughman World

Championships.

"I gave up everything. If I don't win it won't be because I wasn't in

shape. It's just punch till you throw up."

Enable frames