December 1, 2004

Years ago, Danny Kane realized the Teamsters Union needed new blood and a new image: The mobbed-up thieves who'd made sweetheart deals and raided the pension funds had to go.

Now Mr. Kane, a burly 40-year-old who stands 6 feet 2 inches, checks in
somewhere north of 250 pounds, and has a passion for boxing, thinks the fight
game needs a new image and that fighters must unionized to make sure they get a fair deal.

So Mr. Kane is proposing an unlikely marriage—between the Teamsters and
boxing—and he's quite willing to officiate at the ceremony.

"Boxers need rules; boxers need protection," says Mr. Kane, president of
Teamster Local 202 in the Hunts Point Market in the Bronx. "People think it's
impossible to organize fighters. They say the fighters are too frightened and
too independent, but that's what they said about every group we've organized."

Mr. Kane says boxing is the only major sport not organized, pointing to the
National Football League, Major League Baseball, and the Professional Golfers'
Association, among others.

"It all started with football," Mr. Kane says. "The NFL was in disarray in
the '50s. It was too violent; the public didn't care much for it, and the
advertisers stayed away. Then Pete Rozelle [the NFL commissioner] got the owners together and said, 'We've got clean up the sport; we've got to have rules.'"

The result was that the players had to abandon the anything-goes kind of play
of early football, owners had to give up some power, and the sport blitzed
advertisers with promises of a more wholesome image.

"It was good for everybody," Mr. Kane says. "The advertisers came in, the TV
networks paid enormous amounts of money to broadcast the games, the owners got richer, and the players got a union that boosted salaries and benefits. Look, the NFL just signed an $8 billion TV deal."

The drive to unionize fighters got its biggest boost in 2003, when a former
light-heavyweight champion, Eddie Mustafa Muhammad (who also fought as Eddie Gregory), formed the Joint Association of Boxers, known as JAB.

Fifty fighters showed up at the first meeting in Las Vegas, and Mr. Muhammad
has signed up some 300 more from gyms across the country. Among the members are top fighters like Jameel McCline and Shannon Briggs.

JAB and the Teamsters are looking for a minimum pay scale for fighters,
health insurance, retirement funds, and pension benefits. Some promoters, like
Don King, have paid JAB lip service, but no one has come to the table.

If anyone can bring them there, it's Danny Kane, who grew up in Astoria,
Queens, and later moved to the East Side of Manhattan. He joined the Teamsters 20 years ago and landed a warehouse job in the Hunts Point Market about 100 yards from his Local 202 office.

"I'm a trade union man, period," he says.

There are just two pictures on the walls in his office. One is a photograph
of his grandfather, who spent 50 years selling produce in the market. The other is a signed original color painting of the first Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamsters boss in the '50s and '60s who disappeared some 30 years ago. His son, James P. Hoffa, the national Teamsters president, supports unionizing boxers.

Labor battles are nothing new to Mr. Kane. A few years ago, he led a group of
insurgent reformers who replaced the old Local 202 bosses who ran what was then considered a corrupt local.

In late 1990 and 1991, he took part in the six-month strike at the Daily
News, which the drivers played a key role in resolving. Many scab drivers quit
in fear and more than a few bundles of papers ended up at the bottom of the East River.

"Me and my brother Walter [a Teamsters lawyer] used to go up and down the
streets on the East Side to make sure newsstands weren't carry the News," he
says. "When the dealers would see us coming they'd throw their hands up in the air and yell, 'No papers, no papers.' "

He says he's bringing the same drive—minus the overt intimidation—to
unionizing fighters.

"There's no middle class in boxing," he says. "You've got the few guys who
make millions and the many who make $12,000 a year. That's it."

He says federal rules, unionized boxers, and a cleaner sport will bring in
advertisers and national TV contracts—just like those things did for football.

"But it has to be done cleanly," he says. "Not only do we have to be
legitimate, we have to appear to be legitimate."


 

The article originally appeared in the New York Sun on November 29, 2004 and was written by Stuart Marques.

©2003-2007 Joint Association of Boxers
P.O. Box 2662
New York, NY 10108
Eddie Mustafa Muhammad
(202) 437-5755
info@boxersunion.org