By Ricardo Ibarra

Longevity in the sport of boxing can be a very difficult to achieve. Navigating the ultra-competitive field of promoting and sustaining a long, successful run can be a daunting task, but over the past three decades, promoter Brian Halquist has done it, maintaining his position as one of the top promoters in the Pacific Northwest and staging over one hundred shows that included televised cards on HBO, Showtime, and ESPN.

His signature promotion, the “Battle at the Boat” series at the Emerald Queen Casino in Tacoma, Washington, remains the longest-running tribal casino boxing series in the country and one of the longest-running continuous boxing series. This Saturday, the “Battle at the Boat” will stage its twentieth anniversary show with its 111th installment, celebrating a monumental accomplishment.

Heading into fight week, promoter Brian Halquist talked to Fightnews.com® about this milestone accomplishment and the road traveled.

You were an accomplished wrestler in college, competing in seven national tournaments. How has knowing the mentality and focus that’s needed in athletics helped you to succeed in the sports business and build relationships?

You know, it’s such a big part of my life. Fifteen years (in wrestling) and nine hundred matches. Anything that I do in my life it’s just like I’m preparing for wrestling. Every fight I do, every concert. Here’s the goal, here’s what we have to do to get there. In other words, you have to do all the work. Work hard and hopefully you come out successful. Every day of my life, whether it’s work, family, or whatever, that’s always my mentality. Just because that’s what I knew growing up.

In the early years of the “Battle at the Boat” series, were there ever moments when you second guessed your endeavor and what you’re trying to do?

Yeah that first fight. I can remember twice in my career, once when I promoted my first MMA fight with Scott Coker and Strikeforce at the (Tacoma) Dome and when I promoted the Top Rank show at the Emerald Queen. I can remember thinking, “What the hell am I doing here?” So I did have that, the first time I did it. It was at the press conference on both of those. But we bit off a lot in those fights. One was a world title fight and we didn’t have a venue at ten days and we put that on. We got it taken care of. And the first MMA fight was a huge one too. It was at the Dome, we had eight thousand people come watch Bob Sapp. I never doubted myself or anything but I did think “What the hell am I doing here?”

Speaking of MMA, you’ve grown that side of your business into a fairly big promotion. Was your wrestling background a big reason for you wanting to get into that or was it a purely a business decision?

Oh no, I really liked MMA. And I had met Dana White before the UFC got big. He was at the WBC ratings meeting when I was down there with Joe Hipp and he was trying to get started. The only reason I didn’t get into involved way long ago was the boxing commission. If you remember early on it was outlawed in a lot of states. For a while there John McCain wanted to shut it down. They were doing those fights on the reservation, but they weren’t sanctioned and we were told that anyone with a license that was caught at one of those would lose their license, so I fully pulled out of it. But I really watched it going along. The thing I loved about it was wrestlers were winning. I mean guys like Randy (Couture), they were collegiate wrestlers. So I loved the idea of being able to promote a sport and be able to help wrestlers out. Athletes in general, but especially wrestlers because in wrestling, prior to MMA, the professional was when you were in college. You couldn’t go any higher unless you were on the Olympic team and then only one guy a weight class does it every four years so college wrestling really was like pro wrestling without getting paid. That was the highest level you could really do it. So I loved the fact that wrestlers could make some good money after college. That was a big, big deal to me.

How has it been working in both fields? How is it working in boxing compared to the MMA business?

It’s interesting because now MMA guys, they’ve got to box and so a lot of these guys go to the boxing gyms and get sparring and vise-versa. They’re separate entities, although they seem to be coming together a little more. I really like both boxing and MMA. They’re distinctly different but very similar to work in. I’ve really enjoyed working with everybody that I’ve gotten to work with over the years. So many great friendships. I had Ray Seales call today to wish me good luck next weekend. And for instance, Jimmy Lennon, Jr. right before our hundredth show we were getting ready to go on the air on Showtime and I had a phone call like five minutes to seven and I thought, who is calling me right before a show and I saw it was Jimmy Lennon. He said, “I just want to tell you congratulations on your hundredth show” So, I have just made so many incredible friendships.

Promoting is hard and stressful at times, but on the other hand it’s very rewarding. We’re at the point now, and have been for some time, where we can take a boxer and take him as far as he is able to go. We’ve got contacts at the network level and if we had the right kid that could win a title, we could take him to that. The thing about it is we’re more of a regional show, so it’s tough to sign an Olympic gold medalist because it costs so much money and our room’s not that big. But it’s our hope that we can go out and find one of those kids. We’re really aggressively looking for a couple of boxers to sign that we can really get behind. But that’s another subject.

Ten years ago there were a lot of promising up-and-coming fighters in the Pacific Northwest. You had a lot of them signed. Lately, though, it seems like we’ve seen that pool shrink. Why do you think that is?

Well you know the one thing about Northwest boxing, we had the best amateur program in the 1970’s. In that decade, when Joe Clough was coaching the Tacoma Boy’s Club we had literally, and this is no exaggeration, it’s a fact, it’s proven…we had the best amateur program in the world. Not in the United States, but in the world. I saw a picture on Joe’s Facebook page and it had from Larry Smith, Ray Seals and those guys all the way to Byron Boyd and in between. And there were five world champions and two Olympic gold medalists in that picture. Johnny Bumphus…some of the guys that didn’t medal but were world champions…(Rocky) Lockridge. We were really lucky to have a program like that and in Tacoma of all places.

Another thing I think, with the talent pool, is with the social networking and computers. Every sport, not just boxing, is having issues getting kids to turn out now. Kids are just more into games and computers and all that kind of stuff. And I think that’s really hurt sports. For instance a friend of mine who coaches wrestling at Foss High School. He had nine kids turn out. He used to have sixty kids turn out. You don’t get the kids up here turning out for sports like they used to.

You’ve been a promoter for a long time and in that time I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of promoters come and go. What do you think the secret to your longevity has been?

I think that, like we talked about earlier, my athletic background. Goal setting and working hard to achieve those goals and just never giving up. If your down in a match by two points, you don’t quit, you just work harder. That’s really what I’ve done. Along the way, I made good relationships. We expanded the business a bit when we did some other shows. We got into concerts and did the Playboy Mansion shows for five years. And so, we expanded the business while keeping our Emerald Queen Casino gig going. And it worked out so well with the Emerald Queen, because before I was renting arenas. With the new business model we put together it worked really well for the casino, worked well for us. It just took a lot of hard work.

Did you ever think that you and the Emerald Queen Casino would grow to be such an important part of boxing in the Pacific Northwest?

I didn’t. I can tell you that first fight was just so weird because Bruce Trampler of Top Rank had called and they had Emmett Linton (*from Tacoma). I’d been working with them a little bit with Joe Hipp and (Greg) Haugen and got to know all those guys and I got a call. And they said we’ve lost our venue, it’s Emmett Linton, your local kid, do you want to promote a show up there? And I couldn’t afford renting the Tacoma Dome, obviously, I was just starting out and money was tight. But I had talked to Frank Wright, and Jeff Magruder, my friend who I was an agent for a while, he was a contractor involved in building the Emerald Queen. So, he told Frank Wright the GM (General Manager), ‘Hey my old agent is promoting boxing” and Frank wanted to get boxing in (the casino) to get some people in here, so we talked about it and when Arum called I said, “I would love to do it but I can’t.” And he said, “Well you have a casino up there now.” So, I said, “They don’t have a venue.” Anyway, I went and spoke to Frank and he rented a circus tent and off we go. So from that first fight, I just couldn’t believe we pulled it off in ten days. It was an international TV show. A world title fight. And Butterbean was on it. It was a pretty big show, but I had no idea we would be here twenty years later talking about this. There wasn’t a goal to be the biggest or best. It was just doing great shows and being profitable in the business. Always giving people some great entertainment.

You’ve promoted some memorable events. From Ike Ibeabuchi destroying Chris Byrd on HBO, to the Showtime bantamweight tournament, to the HBO show featuring the world title fight between VernonForrest and Carlos Baldomir. Which shows stand out to you as personal favorites?

Definitely Forrest-Baldomir. That was a huge one. It was HBO World Championship boxing. That’s as big as boxing gets. It was just such a magical weekend. Forrest won his title back. You had the number one broadcast team. I mean that’s just one those incredible weeks. And the other one, you brought it up, was the Showtime bantamweight tournament. They had four world champions in that building that night. The best in the world were sitting in Tacoma, Washington and being broadcast internationally on Showtime. That was a big one. That was a lot of exposure and you talk about friendships. I met Jimmy Lennon, Jr. at a Showtime fight. And he ended up being our ring announcer for a while. So, definitely those two shows stick out. And then a couple other times that stand-out was when we had Walter Wright on. He went on to The Contender show. And David Torres, too. Those guys could sell the room themselves and it was pretty amazing. When those kids fought it was pretty special.

You have a lengthy resume of fighters at the top level that you’ve worked with. Who are some of the names that were meaningful to your history and the Emerald Queen’s history?

Well Kenny Ellis, the first kid we signed, we took him to the number three ranking in the world. And he was an NABA champion. We had him fight for the NABO, NABF, and NABA titles…all three of those titles…we had him fight Kinglsey Ikeke for those and he got beat. So that was the end. I didn’t want to take that fight…all we had to do was sit there and we would’ve been a mandatory or not take such a risky fight, but anyway we took him as far as he could possibly go, that’s for sure.

Another one was David Torres. Frank (Wright) saw him fight at the Lucky Eagle Casino and called me up afterwards and said we’ve got to talk to this kid, he looked great. So we had him fight and we signed him. I think he was 22-0 when he put him in at the Playboy Mansion against former world champion Julio Diaz and he got beat. David was really great to work with.

And Walter Wright. You know Walter lived with me and my family for a while. So he was like a family member and he’s like a brother to my kids.

Those two guys were very, very special to me and to the Battle at the Boat series.

Chad Van Sickel was a kid who I think was 15-0 when we signed him. He moved in with me…half the guys I signed lived with me! But Chad, we got him to 20-0 or something like that and then he lost. But, oh, one of the greatest fights we promoted was Chad Van Sickle when he fought Luke Munson and it was on ESPN. Chad had knocked the kid down in the ninth round, I think, and it was just heaven. We had won the fight. And all of a sudden Luke hit Chad and put him down. Chad stood up and held on the rest of the fight and he got the win. But it was spectacular. That was a great one!

I would say Chad Van Sickle, Walter, and David really, really stand out to me.

Looking to the future what are some of the things you’d like to do or see happen in boxing in the Pacific Northwest?

I can tell you right now that we have two other casinos that we’re going to be working at. We’re licensed in two other states now. And we’re going to be making an announcement on August 1st about our expansion. We’ve done a lot more than just at the Emerald Queen, but for the last few years it just been pretty much that. For the last six months we’ve been working feverishly. I’ve been doing a lot of traveling to different states and we’re going to make our announcement. And it’ll be in both boxing and MMA we’re going to be growing. It’s going to be very, very exciting.

You’ve got an important show coming up and its good card from top to bottom. What do you do to ensure you keep putting on good cards that people will enjoy?

I’ve got the best team around me that I’ve ever had. I would put my boxing and MMA matchmakers up against anyone in this country. Andy Nance has just done a great job. And Anthony Woods coordinating the events, the media. We just have such a good team and everybody cares about it. Everybody is proud of our shows. And you know, a lot of times people just put shows together. For us it is not just about putting shows together, it’s about quality shows. Because what I say is this and I’ve learned this over my thirty plus years promoting. The most important person in that building isn’t the fighter, it’s not the manager, trainer, media, promoter. The most important in that arena is the guy who bought the ticket. We’re telling people that we’re going to entertain them for a couple hours and we all take great pride in putting on the best quality show we possibly can. If you do that, people will come back. If you don’t, they won’t.

Is there anything you’d like to say in closing to fans out there?

We have a great show coming up. Our twentieth anniversary. We’re really happy that we’ve got a quality show. We’re starting on our twenty-first year this summer and I’d just like to thank everybody that’s ever bought a ticket to one of our shows. And I hope that we have been able to take them out of the daily grind of life and work and give them a good evening out, which is what our job is.

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Brian Halquist will stage his 111^th installment of the “Battle at the Boat” series Saturday at the Emerald Queen Casino, celebrating an impressive twenty year run with a six bout fight card headlined by local favorite Mike Gavronski taking on Quinton Rankin in a ten round light heavyweight contest. Doors open at 6p and the first bell is at 7 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at the EQC box office and all Ticketmaster outlets.