DAZN Welcomes Overtime Boxing (OTX): Exciting Fights and Captivating Stories for Generation Z Fans – Great

Brandon Rhodes realized his company could help fill what he determined was a void in the boxing business when Rhodes read one of Shakur Stevenson’s Tweets in May 2022.

Stevenson, a two-weight world champion who has emerged as one of the best boxers in sport, wrote, “I wish the world knew my whole story.”

Storytelling is one of the greatest strengths of Overtime, a sports media company that typically targets tech-savvy Generation Z sports fans through social media accounts that have attracted more than 80 million followers across such platforms as Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube. Overtime Boxing, branded as OTX, will officially launch Friday night in Atlanta, where a five-bout card will be streamed by DAZN, starting at 7:30 p.m. EDT.

OTX’s inaugural event will mark the beginning of a four-card series that’ll be streamed by DAZN each Friday night in August, all from OTE Arena in downtown Atlanta. The company’s mission is to make competitive fights that feature either prospects progressing toward contender status or legitimized contenders in its main events and co-features.

Elijah Pierce (17-2, 14 KOs), a southpaw from Midwest City, Oklahoma, will face Filipino contender Mike Plania (28-2, 15 KOs) in OTX’s initial eight-round main event Friday night.

“We’re really focusing on the next generation of fighters at the prospect and contender levels,” Rhodes, OTX’s general manager, told BoxingScene.com. “What we do at Overtime so well, historically, with basketball and football, has been discovering new, up-and-coming talent, telling their stories and exposing them to a broader audience and helping build them up. In basketball, Zion Williamson is a great example of someone we found and covered early and has gone on to the NBA.

“So, we’re hoping to do the same in boxing, really find young talent, whether they’re unsigned or have a promoter, to tell their story over an extended period of time, get them fights they’re getting a fair purse for – not having to pay for [their fights], not having to travel to whether it be Mexico or the [Dominican Republic], things of that nature – and really just make it a career path.”

OTX has signed nearly 50 fighters, some of whom have promoters, to one-bout contracts as part of its trial run this summer (click here for its full schedule of fights: www.otboxing.com). The company’s plan is to get feedback from fighters, fans, sponsors and DAZN following the four cards it has scheduled for this month before it commits to an increased investment in boxing for 2024.

Rhodes, a former Gatorade executive who has served in various capacities for Overtime since 2018, worked with Overtime’s CEO, Dan Porter, to commit to boxing after Rhodes became consumed with the sport once he embarked on an amateur career that has included participating in the New York Golden Gloves tournament.

Though established boxing companies like Bob Arum’s Top Rank Inc., Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing and Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions have made commitments to strengthening their social media presences in recent years, Rhodes believes Overtime’s business model will fill a need in a sport that has consistently sought younger fans for many years. Generation Z consists of people born from the mid-90s to late-90s until the early 2010s.

“As I got really passionate about participating [in boxing], I was obviously consuming a lot more of the content around the sport,” Rhodes said. “I realized that while there were these young, up-and-coming global superstars in the sport – the Haneys, the Shakurs, the Teos of the world – there wasn’t really a content platform like Overtime telling their stories in the way Gen Z and anybody else consumes that content. That was a clear gap to me. And as we delved further into that research, we found that, you know, boxing was the number four sport amongst Gen Z.

“And we also found that eight out of 10 Overtime fans said that they were boxing fans. So, then the content play made a ton of sense. Of course, from our end we didn’t wanna stop there, with just content. We wanted to take it a step further and be a platform for these young fighters to fight and get shown. That’s when we were able to strike our deal with DAZN, which we’re super excited about, to showcase them globally on one of the major platforms. But then also do what we do best from a social [media] perspective.”

From a competition standpoint, OTX will experiment with an “Overtime Round.” If any of the four-round, six-round or eight-round bouts on OTX’s cards result in a draw, an additional round will be quickly added to that bout to decide the winner.

OTX also will use an 18-foot-by-18-foot ring for its fights, smaller than the industry standard, which Rhodes expects to lead to more action.

Fighters also can increase their purses with knockout bonuses. Any boxer who wins by knockout or technical knockout will earn a bonus, but additional bonuses will be awarded if a fighter scores a knockout in the first or last round of his or her bout.

Streaming evenly matched, entertaining fights obviously is imperative if OTX is to remain in the boxing business. Conveying the stories of compelling prospects – junior welterweight Kurt Scoby (12-0, 10 KOs) and middleweight Lorenzo “Truck” Simpson (13-0, 7 KOs), for example – is also vital to OTX establishing itself in a market dominated by deep-pocketed platforms, namely ESPN, Showtime and DAZN, in the United States.  

“Shakur Stevenson Tweeted, ‘I wish the world knew my story,’ ” Rhodes recalled. “And then Devin Haney retweeted it and said, ‘Same.’ To me, those are two of the most talented young world champion fighters. I don’t think in basketball you would see the same thing. So, that was a little bit eye-opening to me, that fighters are clamoring for more storytelling amongst themselves. Obviously, from a journalism perspective the sport is well covered. I think from a digital content perspective, it just told me that what we’re doing would have some legs.

“We’ll do cross-promotion across all of our accounts, of course. That’s Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat. Wherever there’s a young audience, we are there, and we program those channels with specific content for them. We’re super excited to bring that reach to boxing and create content the way that we do best.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.