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Kim Poulsen & Sauerland Event
01.02.2010 | By
Henrik Risum |
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”It is a dream come true. It can be compared to a
footballer transferring from AC Horsens to Real Madrid.
It was simply just too good an offer to say no to. In
reality it was an easy decision to say yes to Sauerland,
but it was hard to say goodbye to Henrik Risum who has
really worked hard to get me fights. It’s been a
personal relationship which is not just based on
business.”
So says Kim Poulsen to newspaper Horsens Folkeblad in an
article entitled “A golden chance for Golden Boy”.
More than two weeks has now passed since I got a phone
call from Kim’s trainer Brian Mathiasen, telling me that
Kim wasn’t going to take the fights I had lined up for
him, and that he had decided to break our contract and
accept an offer that Sauerland Event had given him
behind my back. Kim has at no time contacted me about
his decision. Not before Mathiasen’s phone call, and not
after. So in reality he apparently never found it
necessary “to say goodbye”.
Only a few weeks prior he had asked to get his contract
with Risum Boxing extended, after Sauerland, or at least
someone working with Sauerland, had approached him in
December offering him a contract. In that connection he
publicly declared that to him money was not everything,
and that he would be loyal towards me in every way.
“I am not one to just jump ship because someone promises
me fame and fortune. Both Henrik and I are willing and
interested in working with other people, but I am
loyal!”,
he said back then.
(Read Here)
Maybe I should have seen this whole thing coming when I
got an explanation about a broken printer preventing him
from signing the new contract, but if there was ever one
boxer in the whole world that I trusted it was Kim, and,
as he himself told Horsens Folkeblad, our relationship
was based on much much more than just business.
I would really hate to come off as someone who feels
sorry for himself, and I may be a bit too “romantic”,
but when Kim apparently thinks he can justify breaking
our contract because the offer was “too good to say no
to”, I also have a need to explain why I feel, lacking a
better word, “betrayed” and unusually badly treated. Of
course I know how this business works, that 99 percent
of the people involved in boxing doesn’t know what
loyalty and decency means, but I was sure that Kim was
among the one percent who does. I didn’t have any doubt
at all, but obviously I was very, very wrong.
There has never been a bad word between us, but now
there are no words at all. Kim hasn’t called, e-mailed
of even send me a text message since I was last in
contact with him on January 13, two days before the
phone call from Mathiasen. Not even a simple “thank you
for everything”, and, to tell the truth, I really feel
disrespected by Kim and those in his “current team”.
And the irony of the whole thing is that if Kim had come
to me and told me how the situation was, that he really
wanted to pursue the big opportunity it is to get a
contract with Sauerland, even if they didn’t want me to
continue managing him, I would have been willing to work
on finding a proper solution. Even though I would feel
that he was letting me down, because it was an
opportunity like this with me as manager we had all
worked for through more than three years, I wouldn’t
have stood in his way. Instead Kim is now facing a
possible breach of contract case, unless a solution is
soon found between Risum Boxing and Sauerland Event.
It is the way this whole thing has been handled that
hurts the most. Disrespect, and money and glamour ahead
of good, old fashioned decency.
There is no doubt that Kim himself deserves a lot of
credit for where he is today. He has done whatever it
took, in every way, and never complained about boxing
for small money at the start of his career. But when it
comes down to it, I am the one who invested the money
required, and I am the one who worked hard to make, and
pay for, the right fights at the right time to build his
professional career.
And I have never received one Euro in return.
NOT ONE! So far it has been 100 % expenses for me, and
it was to be in the coming years that I also got
something more than just bills in return.
I would have been happy to make a promotional deal with
Sauerland regarding Kim, and they knew this, but they
wanted him for themselves, and Kim chose them ahead of
me and gave a damn about our contract and what would
have been the morally correct thing to do. I have to
admit that it hurts to find out that a person I have
fought long and hard for wasn’t willing to fight for me
when it really mattered.
In Horsens Folkeblad, Kim also says:
“Sauerland has the contacts to get me a title fight, if
I of course live up to expectations. I hope that a
European title fight can be in the cards for 2011”.
When I read this, I must say I feel taken advantage of
quite a bit. He is implying that I would not be able to
get him title fights, and basically that he doesn’t have
a lot of faith in me as a manager. Well, first of all,
Kim already had a title fight, even in his hometown,
and, secondly, I have made European title fights for
several boxers in the past, so I find it hard to see how
he can justify that reasoning.
And why did he and his family come to me in 2006 and ask
me to give Kim a chance to fulfil his dream of becoming
a professional boxer? Was it because no one else back
then wanted to? Was I the only one who saw the potential
in him? Or was I just a naïve “sponsor”, used until
something better came along? Right now, that’s how I
feel anyway.
And I’m very much amazed by the ways of Sauerland Event,
just “taking” a boxer who is contracted to someone else.
At no time have they contacted me directly, and they
even have the audacity to present Kim as “their” boxer
at a press conference in Copenhagen. Let me make one
thing clear one more time: I have a contract with Kim
Poulsen!!!
Kim, Sauerland and Danish TV2, who is supposed to
broadcast Kim’s fights in the future, can say what they
want, but until a solution is found he is not a
Sauerland-boxer!
I am hoping that a solution can be found soon, without
lawyers, court-cases and mud throwing back and forth,
but with the approach that has been taken so far I don’t
know how realistic that is. I guess only time will tell.
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