​Kalle Sauerland & KSIGettyImageAs Viddal Riley headlines Wembley on November 14, the Hall of Fame heir who staked his reputation on influencer boxing is closing in on a milestone few promoters ever reach. He tells me why the fighter who started out training KSI could be the one to deliver it.When Kalle Sauerland started putting YouTubers in boxing rings, the reaction within the sport was nearly unanimous. The son of a Hall of Fame promoter, a man who had delivered world champions and some of the biggest nights in European boxing, was trading his family’s name for influencer fights.“People thought I’d gone mad,” Sauerland told me. “My dad still doesn’t understand it. But I never left traditional boxing. I was trying to make sure boxing still has an audience in 20 years’ time.”Four years on, the bet looks shrewd. Misfits Boxing, the promotion he co-founded with KSI and Mams Taylor, runs on a long-term deal with DAZN and pulls in viewers boxing had struggled toreach. In March, Sauerland and his brother Nisse bought back their old business from Wasserman with a European investor, folding traditional boxing and their Misfits stake into a single company, MF Sports. And in Viddal Riley, a fighter who started out on YouTube, Sauerland believes he has his 50th world champion.Boxing royaltySauerland was born into the business. His father, Wilfried, founded Sauerland Event in 1978 and presided over Germany’s 1990s boxing boom with fighters like Henry Maske, earning induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2010.Kalle widened the map. He delivered Arthur Abraham and Mikkel Kessler to Showtime’s Super Six tournament, co-founded the World Boxing Super Series, and in 2018 staged the George Groves-Callum Smith final in Jeddah, the first major boxing match ever held in the region, years before Saudi money reshaped the sport. His stable has included David Haye, George Groves, Derek Chisora and Chris Eubank Jr.“I’ve had the whole rollercoaster, top to bottom,” Sauerland says. “Champions, stadiums, TV deals in every market you can name. Once you’re in this sport, you never get out.”The exit, and the returnIn March 2021, LA-based sports agency Wasserman acquired Team Sauerland to create Wasserman Boxing, in a reported multimillion-pound deal. For a family promoter, it was a rare cash-out to a global agency.“We’d spent years co-promoting with rivals because that was the only way to make the best fights,” Sauerland says. “Wasserman gave us a scale no family business could match.”When Wasserman underwent it’s transition to The Team, the Sauerlands moved to take back the boxing arm of the business. MF Sports now owns MF Pro, their traditional promotion, and a large stake in Misfits, both on long-term DAZN deals. It plans to expand into new sports in the near future.“Buying it back was the biggest bet we’ve made,” Sauerland says. “We know what boxing looks like at its best, and we know where the next au