De La Hoya buys The Ring magazine

Boxing great Oscar De La Hoya has purchased The Ring, a magazine in Blue Bell that has chronicled boxing since 1922 and is the oldest sports magazine in the country.

"As a young kid growing up, I was always waiting with anticipation to get the new issue of The Ring," De La Hoya said in a news release yesterday. "To be here now and actually own the title is a dream come true."

The acquisition last month by Sports & Entertainment Publications L.L.C., which is a subsidiary of De La Hoya's widely diversified Golden Boy Enterprises L.L.C., included KO, World Boxing and Pro Wrestling Illustrated. The price was not disclosed.

The seller was Kappa Publishing Group Inc., which bought the magazines in 1992. Kappa bills itself as the largest publisher of puzzle magazines and books in the United States.

The owner of Kappa, Nicholas G. Karabots, and his wife contributed $7 million to the purchase of The Gross Clinic.

Nigel Collins, editor of The Ring and the other boxing titles, said in an interview that the sale had made him optimistic about the future.

"Now we have somebody who owns the magazine who's a boxing person. . . . Because of the love of the sport, we'll be given the resources to do more than we have been."

Collins said that Golden Boy had hired seven employees from Kappa and that for the time-being, Golden Boy would rent office space and services from Kappa. He said there had been no talk of moving the magazines.

Founded by a New York Telegraph sports editor named Nat Fleischer, The Ring compiled the first monthly ratings in boxing and started awarding championship boxing belts in 1922. The first Ring belt went to heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, who had an occasional byline in the magazine.

De La Hoya, winner of a gold medal at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, and numerous world titles, said Golden Boy Enterprises would not meddle with the editorial content of the magazines.

Arnold C. Joseph, a lawyer with Cozen O'Connor, of Philadelphia, said he had become general manager of Sports & Entertainment Publications.

"I'm going to spend a significant amount of time helping Oscar build it up," said Joseph, who will keep his position at Cozen. He said he had been working with De La Hoya since 2004.

Joseph said The Ring's circulation was about 100,000 per month, though that goes up or down depending on whether there are high-profile fights.

He said the immediate priorities were to boost the magazine's online presence and to increase the amount of advertising in the magazine.