The Deal: Inside the World of a Super-Agent by Jon Smith

Author:Jon Smith
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781472123046
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2016-09-07T18:30:00+00:00

9

From Russia with Love

My involvement with the London Monarchs was over but I still had an appetite for American sport. I went to see the NHL and the NBA to talk them into bringing teams to London. They were keen on international expansion and saw London as the logical host city, not least because of the absence of a language barrier.

The NHL were the first into action; the Chicago Blackhawks and the Montreal Canadiens contested a two-game series at Wembley Arena in September 1992. We branded it as the ‘Molson Challenge’ – after lead sponsor Molson Breweries of Canada – and the games were the first warm-up outings for both sides ahead of the 1992–93 season.

The Blackhawks had a player called Stu Grimson who was nicknamed the ‘Grim Reaper’ because he fought opponents regularly on the ice. If anyone ever got past him, he’d take them out. We wanted to focus a promotional campaign for the games on his ‘Grim Reaper’ image and lined up an interview with the Sun. A double-page spread had been agreed – significant coverage back then – when I got a phone call from Stu in his hotel room.

‘I can’t do this,’ he said. ‘I can’t talk to the Sun.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘They have naked women in the Sun and I am a Born-Again Christian.’

‘How can you be a Born-Again Christian when you kick the crap out of anyone that moves in a game?’

‘That’s a different matter. It’s my job.’

I have always thought that distinction was a real dichotomy, one that resonates today when I consider where morality fits into working as an agent. Stu thought it was all right to knock seven bells out of someone but not to look at a picture of a woman. He was 6ft 5in, 220lbs and an animal on the ice yet, meanwhile, he was studying for an Economics degree at the University of Manitoba. Perhaps it all added to the intrigue.

We had to pull the Sun article to keep him happy and, instead, set him up with the Daily Express, a much tamer publication.

The games went well. I described them in the event programme as the ‘greatest hockey spectacle ever witnessed in Great Britain’, given it was thirty-three years since the NHL had visited our shores. The two sides were among the six NHL founders and the gravitas of the teams involved only helped strengthen our case for a repeat in future years.

The New York Rangers and the Toronto Maple Leafs followed in their footsteps with another two-game series in September 1993. It was then I learned an invaluable lesson for any promoter – you need backups for absolutely everything.

I had bought a brand-new Zamboni – a device which cleans the ice to remove any divots or indentations on the surface from the players’ blades – but it broke down just before the first game was due to start. We were broadcasting live in the UK. Gary Glitter was the warm-up act, chiefly because his ‘Hey Song’ was a staple at NHL games in the States.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.