Monique Bovino: “Working internationally this year is my goal, and I believe it is going to happen.”

Monique Bovino: “Working internationally this year is my goal, and I believe it is going to happen.”

In many ways, the life of Monique Bovino is beyond hectic. An early start for the day job. Flying over Australia, literally. The early hours spent in a helicopter reporting on the weather for an Australian network. But once one shift is over, many more lie ahead. Hours spent in the gym with the aim of a possible ring comeback, coupled with her blossoming media career. And undoubtedly, other ad-hoc work alongside the usual day-to-day grind.

It was around 9pm Sydney time when I caught up with Bovino over Zoom. Another long day behind her. “I have just finished at the gym and had a shower,” she told me. “I will go to bed and wake up for a 4am start at work in the morning.”

“I love it’ Bovino adds when I ask if she would prefer her working day to be a little shorter. “If anything, I wish I could be a bit busier. I just love it so much.”

Free time is extremely rare. “Maybe at the weekend I will have a bit of time to go out.”

Much of the media work Monique Bovino does is attached to Wanderer Promotions, a thriving Australian entity headed by the former undefeated welterweight Ricky Colosimo. Bovino is extremely passionate about her involvement in the company.

“In Australia, there are very limited promotions that work with grassroots boxing,” Bovino relays to me. “After fighters turn professional, Wanderer Promotions builds them through their professional careers, not giving them padded fights, giving them good fights that will challenge them and get them to the top without throwing them in the deep end. We take care of them, we nurture them, and we build them up through the media, and that’s where I come in. I’ll sit down with them and bring out the fighter’s personality. I am getting people to connect with the fighter.”

The working relationship with Wanderer Promotions started somewhat by chance. “I was doing an interview one day at a fight night. I had just finished fighting, and Ricky handed me the microphone and said, ”Read and ask these questions.” I just ended up doing a normal chat with one of the fighters, and he said you should do this full-time because you are so good at it. That’s how it happened.”

There are big, ambitious plans for Wanderer Promotions, Bovino says. “I think we are going to take over Australian boxing and also evolve internationally in the future. There are a lot of promotions that are not satisfying boxers in Australia. They have a lot of holes in what they are doing. We are pretty much building our foundation, and our next card is absolutely huge. We have Shannon O’Connell fighting Shanell Dargan, a big female fight and some other good names on as well. We have only been doing this for two years, but we have really shot up in such a short amount of time. Our last show was completely sold out, and we had around 7,000 streams on the Triller broadcast.”

Bovino is hoping to further increase her own profile over the coming months and, therefore, raise the awareness of Wanderer Promotions.

“My work is going international, and by doing that, I am opening more doors for the promotion,” Bovino says. “I think by having myself as the face of the promotion, as well as Ricky, is super important because there are not a lot of promotions out there that have so much involvement from a female who is an ex-fighter and is involved so much in the media as well.

“I am hoping to cover some DAZN shows internationally, or at least work with some promotions overseas. Also working with some big-name fighters overseas, covering their fight week schedules. I am going to align some partnerships overseas, and I am going over to the UK to firm it all up. Working internationally this year is my goal, and I believe it is going to happen.”

Rather surprisingly, the female side of the sport is struggling a little, something which Bovino hopes to change over the next few years.

“The idea is to have a full female card, which is in the works. Hopefully, that will happen in the next two years. It is very hard in Australia. In the UK, the female fighters get a lot of support, but in Australia, they don’t get that much support. But I am hoping that changes in the next two years. The way we do it is we put exciting fights on. The fights that people want to see. There was a fight I recently hosted between Jasmine Parr and Mai Soliman. That fight was absolutely unreal. I remember being on the edge of my seat the whole time. It was the best fight on the whole card. So if we have more of those and more girls stepping up and challenging themselves and not padding their records, we will get the Australian scene supporting female boxing. I do see it changing, but it is up to the promoters to put on better fights.”

Wanderer Promotions will have their next show on February 26th.