Moments after the final punch is delivered Saturday night at the Davies Event Center near the airport, the ring posts will pop out and the ropes will come down.
Fans who just witnessed a full night of boxing are in for a treat.
Paul Wall, a longtime sports fan and Houston rapper, will enter the ring — or what’s left of it — as part of Davies Entertainment’s salute to boxing and hip-hop music.
“We just wanted to shake things up,” said Cameron Davies, president and CEO of Cruising Kitchens, which designs and builds custom food trucks and has an edgy, multifaceted entertainment division that includes boxing. “We’re attempting to draw in some of the younger generation as well as the traditional fight fans.”
Billed as “combat meets culture,” Saturday’s show features a performance by Wall and a nine-bout boxing card headlined by cruiserweight Andrew Tabiti (18-1, 14 KOs) against Shamarian Snider (10-2-1, 8 KOs) in the 10-round main event.
“BRAWL Wall” is the fifth card in Davies’ Brawl Off Broadway series and seventh show overall since the successful food truck entrepreneur entered the boxing business in 2019.
Saturday’s card is the first of three consecutive club shows in San Antonio, all featuring a unique twist.
The other two will compete head-to-head May 28.
Rick Morones Jr.’s TMB Promotions card — headlined an eight-round middleweight matchup of Cem Kilic (16-1, 11 KOs) vs. Aaron Coley (16-4-1, 7 KOs) — will take place at Freeman Coliseum, representing a move up in venue for TMB.
Meanwhile, at Brooks City Base’s Hangar 9, San Antonio welterweight Jairo Castaneda (13-2, 5 KOs) takes on Leonardo Esquivel Carrizales (5-7-1, 2 KOs) in a six-round bout atop an 11-bout card in former fighter Luis Villarreal’s promotional debut.
Like most promoters, Davies is aware of the close connection between hip-hop and boxing.
It’s a relationship that many believe dates back to the Mike Tyson era of the 1980s and ’90s when “Iron Mike” hung out with Tupac Shakur and the group Public Enemy.
Tyson was the first hip-hop athlete.
Today, rap music playing in boxing gyms or during ring walkouts has become the norm.
A Houston native, Davies said he’s “a big fan of hip-hop and the Houston music culture.”
It was a natural, then, for Davies and Daniel “Question” Boskind, president of Davies Entertainment and himself a former hip-hop artist, to invite Wall to represent the popular music genre at the event.
“Paul Wall represents the Texas culture probably better than anybody,” Davies said.
Nationally renowned for his food truck fabrication business that includes a TV show and basketball superstar Steph Curry as a client, Davies has yet to make a name for himself in boxing. But it seems only a matter of time.
He has the facilities. During the coronavirus pandemic, Davies expanded his boxing gym from 10,000 to 30,000 square feet. It now includes the Event Center where the fight cards are held, locker rooms, an injury recovery area, a sauna, suites for corporate patrons, a recording studio, green screen rooms, a barber shop, a cigar bar and a shoe store.
The Event Center, complete with Jumbotron, seats 1,000 and is regularly sold out for boxing.
Davies promotes or manages several professional musicians and boxers, including Henry Arredondo and Daniel Baiz of San Antonio and Floyd Schofield III of Austin.
Baiz and Schofield are scheduled to fight on Saturday’s card in separate bouts.
Davies said he’s yet to make money in boxing but is excited to continue to “grow a platform.”
“I’ve seen how this has affected people’s lives in a positive way,” he said. “After this (show) we’re going bigger and bolder.”
Twitter: @johnfwhisler
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