Boxing, Built Like a Tech Company: Working With Usyk, ft. Ready to Fight’s Kyrylo Korobka

[00:00]  1. Intro: Kyrylo Korobka, Executive Director of Ready to Fight

Host:  Welcome to Bet It Drives, the show that drives you into the unexpected corners of iGaming. With me today is Kyrylo Korobka, Executive Director of Ready to Fight. He’s built fight weeks into global spectacles reaching billions of fans, with collaborations involving Ronaldo, Sky Sports and more. Kyrylo, we’re happy to have you, on the first day before SBC starts. Tell our audience a little about yourself and your company.

Guest:  Hello everyone. My name is Kyrylo.

[00:53]  2. Introducing Ready to Fight and its mission

Guest:  I’m Executive Director at Ready to Fight and on Oleksandr Usyk’s team. I was recognised in the top 30 most influential people in boxing under 30 by Sports Illustrated. I’m responsible for organising high-level events, especially Oleksandr Usyk’s and Daniel Lapin’s fights, building partnerships with big brands, and marketing activations with high-profile athletes.

Host:  For our viewers, Ready to Fight is a promotion company?

Guest:  Not exactly. It’s more of a boxing ecosystem where we develop a lot of different solutions. For example, we have a fintech product that lets you make cross-border payments in seconds. We were co-organisers of Usyk’s undisputed fight, where our co-founder won by knockout over Daniel Dubois, and we were responsible for the whole organisational process, broadcasting, marketing and a lot more. We also partner with boxing federations to help the young generation of athletes reach their goals. Digitizing boxing is our main mission, moving a step ahead of the industry and bringing in new technologies.

[02:46]  3. From corporate marketing to boxing promotions

Host:  Your background isn’t sports directly, right? You worked in international corporations. How did you evolve into the marketing side of sports?

[03:03]  4. How Kyrylo joined Usyk’s team and organised his first major fight

Guest:  It was a bit of a coincidence. I started working for Ready to Fight at the beginning of the company. I had previous experience in international corporations, and I was also chief marketing officer at one of the famous crypto communities in our region. Then I decided to work for Ready to Fight. I’d been there about three months and developed some business opportunities when the first fight of Oleksandr Usyk versus Daniel Dubois was announced, in Wrocław, Poland. I was assigned as one of the main organisers from our team. When it finished successfully, thank God, people around me started to trust me; I’d shown I could be responsible for high-level events. That was about two and a half years ago, when my journey in this industry began.

[04:28]  5. Boxing as both sport and business

Host:  It’s a mix of sport and business for you. What’s your first impression, is it more sport or more business?

Guest:  It’s more about business, of course, because I work in the promotional side of the boxing industry, for the best boxer of all generations. I’m not responsible for the sport part.

Host:  Is Oleksandr the same, or more sport?

Guest:  He’s somewhere between, but more about sport, because he can trust his team, and that’s the most important thing. When you have a team full of good business people, he can totally focus on sport and trust that his team will only do what’s best for him.

[05:51]  6. What it’s like working with Oleksandr Usyk

Host:  How easy or difficult is it to work with a star of Usyk’s magnitude?

Guest:  Not hard at all. He’s a great man, a great example, very grounded, so I respect him so much. Sometimes it’s hard to organise his fights, and I’m exhausted for the next month and a half after one, but with him personally it’s not hard at all.

Host:  Still being young, there’s probably a lot you learn from him.

Guest:  Definitely.

[06:30]  7. Champion’s rule: discipline above everything

Host:  Have you established your own champion rule, the one thing you’ve built for yourself?

Guest:  The best champion rule is discipline. It’s applicable to everything, every industry. You’re a champion or you’re not, it doesn’t matter, the most important thing is discipline. No matter where you’re starting or whether you’re at the summit, discipline and consistency always, because when you’re starting you need discipline to learn, and when you’re at the top you need discipline to keep working and achieving more.

[07:27]  8. Feel the Beat: best and worst walkout songs

Host:  When a champion enters the stage there’s music, and we know which one is yours. Have you heard any of the worst walkout songs?

Guest:  Hard question. Sometimes on TikTok late at night I see weird amateur-level walkouts, an athlete coming to the ring with a rap artist next to him with no skills. Probably because they don’t have a strong marketing team, and because they’re just starting.

Host:  And the perfect song you’ve heard?

Guest:  The last walkout for Oleksandr Usyk at Wembley Stadium. It’s a combination of Ave Maria and his anthem.

[08:42]  9. The story behind Usyk’s Ave Maria anthem at Wembley

Guest:  Do you know why it was that combination? I’ll tell you. His usual song is too short for the long walk from the backstage to the ring. So we needed to think outside the box, to extend it. And because Oleksandr is a very religious person, he felt this combination would be something special for him.

Host:  So you kept the original anthem and added an extended version with Ave Maria?

Guest:  Yes. He started from Ave Maria and finished with his national anthem.

[09:36]  10. Biggest partnership success: Queensberry Promotions

Host:  Your business is mostly about partnerships around big names. Which one went above and beyond expectations?

Guest:  I’d say Queensberry Promotions, one of the best promotional companies in the world, founded by Frank Warren, a legendary promoter. It’s a perfect partnership, the strongest partners in the industry. A year and a half or two years ago, if I’d told someone we’d sign a partnership with them, they’d say it’s impossible, they’re so huge and you’re just starting.

Host:  So you never expected it, but it happened.

Guest:  I expected it, because I strongly believe in our company and our business journey. It happened because we work so hard, the whole team of 100 people, with one goal.

[10:56]  11. Why teamwork and professionalism matter in partnerships

Host:  GR8 Tech and Ready to Fight have had a partnership for a while. Beyond the project itself, what’s been great about it?

Guest:  First of all, your colleagues, the team, work at a high level. We understand each other and it’s always a pleasure to work with them. It’s a combination of professionalism and being flexible, open and quick, and that combination is the most important thing. I’d also mention the merchandise, I really like that line, the design looks fantastic and the quality was very high. And the filming with our co-founder, Oleksandr, was organised at the highest level. The result was a “wow” production.

[12:21]  12. Discovering iGaming: beyond casino stereotypes

Host:  iGaming is perceived differently from the outside. What was your initial, maybe wrong, perception?

Guest:  That it’s only about casino, that you play casino and you can lose, and that’s it. But there are a lot of companies working with software, fintech and a lot of other things. I didn’t expect the industry to be so big and so wide, with such large corporations. It impressed me.

Host:  And the people aren’t so bad.

Guest:  The people aren’t so bad.

[13:26]  13. Confession Lane: meeting legends like Usyk, Ronaldo and Tyson

Host:  Our next short rubric is Confession Lane. Something that struck you that you couldn’t share before.

Guest:  I was really surprised, working with big leaders from the sport industry like Oleksandr Usyk, Cristiano Ronaldo and Mike Tyson. I thought they were somewhere out in space, because their achievements are so high no one can repeat them. But when I got to know them personally, they’re so grounded and very good guys, and very easy to work with.

[14:53]  14. Learning from failures and never repeating mistakes

Host:  We often perceive elite sport as always successful, all gold medals and big victories. Are there failures you take as a learning experience?

Guest:  Definitely. There were a lot of situations I had to learn from. I always try to never repeat a failure. If I have a bad situation in business, I try to learn from it and not repeat it again. That’s the most important thing, because if you repeat your mistakes, you’re not a good specialist.

[15:28]  15. Wrap-up: marketing and boxing share the same spirit

Host:  It was a short ride, Kyrylo, and there are a lot of topics we could keep discussing, but thank you for joining us.

Guest:  Thank you, and we’ll continue building our strong partnership with you. I enjoyed it, and thank you for this excursion around Lisbon.

Host:  Today’s drive showed that marketing with the right partner can hit as hard as the right hook. See you on the next drive.