Red Owl Boxing CEO Greg Bloom didn’t grow up dreaming of boardrooms or broadcast deals. He grew up with boxing.
As a kid in Miami, Bloom was small—“I didn’t hit my growth spurt until I was about 17,” he said in an exclusive interview with The Sporting Tribune—and that meant learning early on how to defend himself. Bloom was captivated by boxing and the rhythm and risk of the sport, glued to “Tuesday Night Fights” on USA Network and ESPN’s weekly cards. At the time, there was no MMA, no competing spectacle—just boxing, raw and unfiltered.
By his mid-teens, Bloom stepped into a gym himself, training for a couple of years “It helped my confidence,” he said. More importantly, it gave him a lifelong entry point into a sport he would eventually look to help reshape from the inside.
Bloom’s path into boxing wasn’t traditional. While attending law school in 2003, he found himself advising a ranked fighter, Gilberto Reyes, on a contractual dispute. The advice worked. Reyes asked Bloom to manage him. That one opportunity turned into a sports agency—Shambala Sports and Entertainment—that, by the time Bloom graduated law school, he was representing roughly 25 fighters across boxing and MMA.
From the beginning, Bloom saw the sport differently. Where others saw fighters chasing paydays, he saw athletes signing away their futures. “They’d look at the purse and the opponent and sign everything else away,” he said. His legal background allowed him to protect fighters, but his role quickly expanded—matchmaker, career and legal advice, even helping fighters find the right trainers. It was, in his words, “a one-stop shop.”
That blend of legal precision and fight-game instinct would follow Bloom through the next phase of his career, including a successful stint helping grow bare-knuckle boxing into a viable modern product. But after decades in combat sports, it was a conversation in Toronto a couple of years ago that pulled him back to his first love.
There, he met Gabriel Fanous, the founder of Red Owl Boxing, and what Fanous described wasn’t just another promotional company. Rather, it was a philosophical shift.
Traditional boxing has long relied on building fighters slowly—padding records with easy wins before eventually risking them in meaningful bouts. Red Owl and Fanous want to flip that model. Instead of protecting prospects, it puts them into competitive “50-50 fights” early in their careers. The goal isn’t an undefeated record—it’s credibility.
“We build reputations, not records,” Bloom said of Red Owl Boxing.
That idea, simple but radical in boxing, is what convinced him to take on the role of CEO.
Red Owl is looking to construct something rare in the sport: a system. Fighters are signed, developed, and tested under one banner, with the intention of preparing them for the highest levels of “heritage boxing”—the traditional sanctioning bodies like the WBC, WBA, IBF, and WBO. Unlike newer models that are looking to create their own titles, Red Owl isn’t interested in reinventing the championship structure. It wants to feed into it—only with better-prepared fighters.
“The guys who come through this system are battle-tested,” Bloom says. “You’re taking a lot of the risk out because they’ve already been in tough fights.”
That philosophy has extended beyond matchmaking. Red Owl has already staged multiple events and is planning more, including a run of shows across the U.S. while constructing a purpose-built arena in Houston—an increasingly rare move in a sport that typically rents venues. The idea is to create a controlled environment tailored specifically to boxing, from lighting to layout.
It’s ambitious, but Bloom believes the timing is right. Boxing, he said, is in the middle of a shift. For years, it played second fiddle to MMA’s meteoric rise, but recent cross-promotional fights and increased investment have brought it back into focus.
“There’s a paradigm shift going on,” he said. “It’s a very exciting time.”
For Bloom and Red Owl, that excitement is rooted in something deeper than business strategy. It’s about restoring a sense of authenticity—making fights that matter sooner, and trusting that fans will recognize the difference.
He knows the approach carries risk. A fighter with a few losses on paper might be overlooked by traditional metrics. But Red Owl is betting that seasoned eyes—promoters, networks, fans—will see beyond the numbers.
“Regardless of record,” he said, “they’ll see a guy who has what it takes to become a champion.”
After more than 20 years around the sport, Bloom isn’t chasing trends. He’s returning to the essence of what drew him in as a kid: real fights, real stakes, and nowhere to hide.
Only now, he’s with the company that is helping to shape the stage.