But there was not a Hearn or a Warren in sight as it was the putative "King of the Small Halls" Steve Goodwin who decided to abdicate his throne after nearly 16 years in the game.


What started as an idea on a family holiday in 2010 when his daughter Olivia, 18 at the time, decided she wanted to become a boxing promoter, has developed into one of the most important elements of the British boxing ecosystem.


The bottom layer of the pyramid, the grass roots, a proving ground — call it what you want, but there is no denying the importance of small hall boxing to what happens at the sport’s sharp end — and Goodwin was at the heart of it in London and beyond.

“The first thing to say is that small hall boxing is a place where nobody makes any money,” Goodwin told me in 2024. “The boxers don’t and the promoter doesn’t. In fact the promoter is lucky if they don’t make a loss. But that means it’s a place where everyone does it for the love.”

Goodwin, a financial advisor with hundreds of clients, who looks after substantial amounts of money on the market, never did it to make cash of his own. It was the promise to Olivia which got him started after he obtained his license from the British Boxing Board of Control. The plan was for Olivia to shadow him for a year and then get her own. The problem was that he was hooked after 12 months in the business.


By then his son Josh, a former amateur and professional boxer himself, was also involved and it was not long before the whole operation was a family affair. Steve has also become an influential boxing manager, which meant he was able to personally provide his fighters with the opportunity to box rather than going cap in hand to other small hall promoters.

The aim for the self-confessed control freak was to secure the best for fighters higher up the pyramid, whether that was contracts with major promoters or world title tilts. He made no secret that without the managerial element he probably would not bother with small hall shows at all.

But on he and his children pressed and over the years, supported by wife and mum, to establish Goodwin Boxing as the longest-running and most prolific enterprise on the small hall scene in the capital. That was until Saturday night when they announced that their three-fight show, headlined by Giorgio Asaila’s victory over Josue Bendana, would be their last.


“Goodwin Boxing have decided to ring the bell for the final time,” their statement read. “We have had a great run. The sport has given us so much and we like to think we have given back. We perhaps never got the opportunities that we deserved to take our product to a bigger platform but that’s okay. What is more important is the lives we have helped through the sport, the relationships we have built and the memories we have made for ourself and also for the thousands of people who have paid money to come to our shows.”

There were 5,379 days between Olivia’s first show, on a red-hot summer evening at York Hall in June 2011, where this writer reported from ringside, and their last on Saturday. They will be missed on the scene but their impact not forgotten.

Staying on the small hall theme, 24 hours before Isaila’s victory and in the very same ring, the one and only Jordan Grannum had the 200th fight of his career, which only started in 2022. To mark that milestone, the Islington man won his four-rounder against Dan "The Monk" Booth on points, which took Grannum’s record to 15-178-7. Those not familiar with the concept of a "journeyman" might see those numbers and assume he’s absolutely useless — but Grannum and those like him are actually the exact opposite.

The Goodwin family and all others who regularly stage boxing shows in this country would struggle to survive without these fighters, who can turn up on a few days’ notice and help a prospect with their boxing education or simply prevent a contest from being cancelled completely. Amazingly, Grannum boxed 29 times in 2025, and that was after taking off January. After beating the Monk this weekend, he goes again this Saturday in Glasgow against Aberdeen’s Jimmy Laing (2-0, 1 KO).

Here’s to another century for the man appropriately known as "The Grafter."

Hats off to Queensberry Promotions for Saturday’s excellent show at Dublin’s 3Arena which has to go down as one of the very best top-to-bottom cards in the world this year. The main event was an evenly contested affair between two of Britain’s hardest working pros, but it was James "Jazza" Dickens who flew home disappointed after he was outpointed by Anthony Cacace.


So now is as good a time as any to finally make the Liverpool derby between him and Nick Ball. Like Dickens, Ball is also on the rebuild after losing his world title to Brandon Figueroa in February on another stacked Queensberry show. The pair, who both trained out of the Everton Red Triangle at one point, has been linked for ages and now it makes sense for them to make it happen.

There are sparring stories aplenty about the pair, but none of them will matter once they have a proper fight in Liverpool.