BILL WALLER: "I GOT A LOT OF RESPECT FOR AL HAYMON...IT'S ALL ABOUT THE ATHLETE"
PC:
Looking at your story and interviewing you, it's like you were the first Al Haymon before Al got into boxing.
BW: The funny thing is, when I was managing Bootsy Collins in Cincinnati, who I managed for 9 years and who is another brother of mine who I love; he has Bootzilla Productions, he's doing the same thing like LA Reid, but when I was doing that, Al Haymon was doing concerts. He was promoting concerts, "The Budfest!" So I got a lot of respect for Al Haymon. I got a lot of respect for him because he thinks about the boxer too, just like he thought about the entertainers. He paid the entertainers well. We both have the same vision. It's all about the athlete at the end of the day. Who better to run a basketball team than a former champion. Phil Jackson, former basketball player, now president. Pat Riley, former world champion, running teams. Look at the football coaches who are winning championships. So former boxers will make great businessmen in the 13th round. But I got a lot of respect for what Al Haymon is doing because he went to the next round from promoting concerts to advising boxers. Well, I went from managing boxers to promoting concerts.
PC:
And both of you guys are from Ohio. He's from Cleveland.
BW: Oh, I didn't know he was from Ohio. I didn't know that. I used to go to Cleveland to see Mark McCormack at International Management. He was my godfather in terms of being an agent. He used to want me to come and recruit black quarterbacks and I said, "Nah, nah. I want to do my own thing." But I learned from him because he had Arnold Palmer and a lot of tennis players. He allowed me to promote some of his tennis players. So it was always somebody who was there that saw in a young African American who wanted to be an entrepreneur and was willing to help me out; like Butch Lewis, like Bob Arum and HBO. Ross Greenburg, who was formerly with HBO, he was a guy who I had his ear. He was a good guy. I love HBO, Bob Arum, Butch Lewis, and the Tony Tubbs' of the world. I can't forget to mention that in the beginning of me managing boxers, Robert 'Bob' Lee, founder of the IBF was VP of another commission at the time, taught me how to read the rules book and taught me the term purse bid. As a result, I took Aaron Pryor's fight to a purse bid. I have never personally met Al Haymon, but I got a lot of respect for what he is doing, man. But I don't want to be a manager anymore. I'm done with that, man (laughing). I was the excuse. "Was he with your wife last night?" "Well, ask Bill. He is the manager." No, no, no, no! I'm over that. But it's a pleasure to be the COO of K9 Boxing Global Promotions and helping him towards his 13th round. And when I see that he's got it, then I'm just there for as long as he needs me. That's how you do it. If you love what you do and do what you love and deliver more than you promise; you always have to deliver more than you promise and be honest with your guys and you will be great. You look at this first K9 Boxing Global Promotions. I told the champ, "You gonna get 2 checks now." He said, "What do you mean two checks?" I said, "You gonna get your money for your purse and then after that, you put your business hat on as a CEO and you get one for promoting the event." And Leon [Margules] from Warriors Boxing is a good guy, even though he gets on my nerves, but you wanna know our connection? You gonna laugh when I tell you this. When I played for the Saints, he was selling beer in the stands while in law school at Tulane.
PC:
No way!
BW: Yep! So when he told me that, I knew we were gonna work it out to go to Cancun. I wasn't going nowhere but Cancun. So we get to Cancun and I say, "Leon, why didn't you tell me we didn't have no TV, man?" He said, "Well, you're the co-promoter with K9 Boxing," so I said, "Okay, let's hustle it out. I got 32 days." So we wind up making good. We did alright. We ended up making 5 figures in foreign broadcast. We had China and Indonesia. So I said, "K9, do you realize that your company co-promoted and we did television and sponsorship stuff. We didn't make a lot, but you gonna get a little side figure check on that as well." He said, "Really?" I told him, "You see what I mean. The third check will come when I get you an endorsement with Subway or someone like that." You gotta teach these things to boxers as time goes on. You have to let them know that when NFL players retire, they go on and be sports announcers, they go on to be a coach. Where do boxers go? Where do our champions go? Some of them go on to be trainers, but you're not wearing a suit and tie training fighters. The way that Oscar De La Hoya is running Golden Boy, you're gonna run K9 Boxing Global Inc. and he's gonna make a way for other boxers to always work towards the 13th round because boxing is going to end one day. The thing is, K9 is still a young man. The average man lives until he's 80 now. What is he gonna do? We want K9 to fight in January or February before his mandatory defense.
PC:
You have a couple of aliases. "$8 million dollar man," "Dollar Bill" and the "Brand Master." You carry a lot of titles.
BW: Yeah, I told you how I got the title $8 million dollar man when I tried to make Aaron Pryor and Ray Mancini. "Dollar Bill" came from Bootsy Collins. I told Bootsy I was going to Arista to get him a contract. I was at his house and he said, "Look, I love you, but you gotta remember this, you're here to get them dollars." So I went and got Clive Davis to give him a $17.2 million dollar contract to sign with Arista. And I called him on the phone and I get his answering service. And I say...I call him #1 because he's the number one Funkateer of all time. I said, "#1" He said, "What?" I say, "We got 17." he said, "17 what?" I said, "17 million." He got choked up and couldn't even talk. He said, "17 million dollar bills?" He got so nervous, he just kept saying, "17 million dollar bills?" So he said, "Look, get them dollars Bill," and hung up the phone. So when he saw me, he said, "Okay Dollar Bill, that's your name now. I got all confused over the phone. Did I hear you right?" I said, "Yeah man, you heard me right. You got a 6-year contract for $17 million dollars with Arista." But now people call me the "Brand Master" because I came up with all these names I would give people and they would take those names and do something with 'em. You take LA Reid. A lot of people don't know what the LA stand for. I do. They probably think it's because he lived in Los Angeles. That's not true. He was the leader of The Deal and he was like my brother. And because he was running about 6'5", we used to call him Little Antonio. His name is Antonio Reid. I used to always say, "Where is Little Antonio," and he said, "Man, stop calling me Little Antonio." So I said, "Okay, we gonna start calling you LA." And from that point on, we been calling him LA Reid. But it was really for Little Antonio. And then when Bootsy...because at the same time I was managing Bootsy, Bootsy couldn't remember Kenny Edmonds name. He said, "What's that one, the one that can sing? The baby face looking one?" He said, "That's what we gonna call him. Babyface." So when we put together the company, I said, "What are we gonna call the production," because I was getting them a production deal with Solar. LA Reid said, "We'll just call it LaFace," because the other two partners didn't want their name in it, so we called it La and Face because LA Reid and Babyface was 50/50 partners.
God blessed me, man, because I started when they started. It was so bad because I was the same age as my clients. And they used to say, "How you gonna manage us and you our age." They used to call me the "Wiz Kid" because I had all of these ideas. Now I named one of my staff members, who is a junior executive, I call him the "Wiz Kid" because he reminds me of me. He is like 20 years old. But I had all of these crazy ideas, me and Bootsy, and that's why we hit it off so well. When K9 fought Ishe Smith, show you how crazy I am, I went and got two K9 dogs and I said, "You going in the ring with these two K9 dogs." And David [Itskowitch], who is now over there at Roc Nation, said, "You can't bring two dogs in the ring." I said, "Why can't I? Watch me!" He said, "You can't do that. They won't allow it." I told them they are gonna allow it. So I went and I showed the people at Showtime that Nelson Mandela had just sent an email to K9 that said, "Good luck, champ. I used to be a boxer," because you know I'm close to Nelson Mandela people in South Africa. I showed it to K9 and I showed it to Showtime and they said, "If you let us put that Nelson Mandela sent him a note, then you can carry them dogs in." So if you go back and look at that footage, the two cops are walking K9 to the ring with two K9 dogs. So that's the kind of promoting I do and that came from Butch Lewis because he used to do crazy things. He wasted stuff on his shirt one time and he was like, "I gotta go change and get something else to wear." I said, "Man, take your shirt off. Go out with your tux and your bow tie. You don't need your shirt. That can become your image. Don King got the hair; you do that." he said, "Man, that's why I love you, come on." And Butch started doing that and that became one of his trademarks.
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