Bad Left Hook

Before going into various arguments, let me just say that I cannot believe that I am actually writing this piece. I never thought I would defend the business acumen of the members of the venerable ‘Jersey Shore' but here I am. I will say that Snooki's venture into boxing makes business sense, but it is also good for the sport in general and I will tell you why.

First off, she has media capital and she is trying to parlay it into a revenue stream. Just look at when Snooki announced that she was getting into boxing promotions. She got stories all through the traditional boxing outlets but she also spread to other non-traditional outlets. If you run a Google search for "Snooki boxing" you find that Snooki got a nice interview on a New York radio show and that she is going to be promoting on Jay Leno tonight. When was the last time that a promoter was on Leno for a small fight?

She has a social media following of about 4 million people on Twitter. As compared to traditional boxing powers, this is absolutely amazing. The official Top Rank feed has 38K followers, Oscar De La Hoya has 150K followers, and Freddie Roach has 55K followers. The only person who comes close is Floyd Mayweather who has 2 million followers. Like her or hate her, she has twice the social media impact of Floyd Mayweather. At this point, She already has successfully marketed her personal brand to people through social media and she has the ability to reach to large number of people very quickly. Also I would assume that a good number of her followers are not fans of boxing, So even by her minimal actions right now, she has riled up some interest in boxing from non-fans and that is always good.

Finally, it's not like Snooki would be a devil surrounded by saints. Lou DiBella, Gary Shaw, and Bob Arum aren't exactly angels, so its not like Snooki's antics would be that far out of place. Oscar has his lingerie pictures and Snooki has drunk pictures of her flashing everyone. Gary Shaw has connections in New Jersey, Snooki has a bunch of connections in New Jersey. Lou DiBella is very Italian, Snooki is very Italian. The more that I think about it, the more I think she will fit right in.

Also like the big promoters, Snooki has an established group of publicists with her. However, her advantage is that her publicists are more accustomed to working through different mediums than traditional boxing channels and therefore they can reach a greater number of people as mentioned earlier. At this point it should be noted that she is not working alone, she has a team of publicists and marketers working with her.

Snooki has advantages in public eye and social media that can be leveraged into a successful promotional business. Her personality flaws are no worse than the current crop promoters and her qualities aren't terribly different either. If she can successfully promote her first fight, then I wouldn't be surprised to see her establish small stable of lower level fighters.