Dmitriy Salita is a fighter. Since he first arrived in the United States from the Soviet Union when he was nine years old, to his career as a professional boxer, and now in his job as a boxing promoter, he has fought not only to win but also to stand by his principles as a man of Jewish faith.
Once, Salita fought other boxers in the ring; now he fights for other boxers to give them a shot at getting in the ring.
The Orthodox Jewish boxing promoter represents more than 30 fighters through his company, Salita Promotions. These boxers include heavyweight world championship contender Jarell Miller; Shohjahon Ergashev; Vladimir Shishkin; and two-time Olympic gold medalist Claressa Shields.
Shields, who is nicknamed the Greatest Woman of All Time (GWOAT), won her undisputed heavyweight world title at a February 2 fight in Flint, Michigan, which Salita promoted, and was “the first woman ever to be the main event on premium cable television in the United States,” Salita said.
Salita Promotions also promoted a March 1 Puerto Rico fight with Subriel Matías and is set to put on a June 6 show at the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Salita’s promoted fights have appeared on Showtime, ESPN, HBO, Sky Sports, and DAZN.
“We promote many of the best fighters in the sport and promote around some premium platforms,” said Salita, explaining that the company was able to build itself up to help the boxers and entertain fans due to the caliber of his unique perspective and education.
Repression of Judaism in early childhood
Salita’s early childhood in Ukraine saw the repression of Judaism. People had to fight to maintain their connection to their Jewish identity. Salita recalled that in his hometown of Odesa, people connected to their heritage through information about the State of Israel, sometimes risking listening to American radio stations or obtaining foreign newspapers.
When he was born, his mother’s maiden name was accidentally written on his birth certificate, but his family kept the mistake, figuring that her less Jewish-sounding surname would protect him from antisemitic discrimination. Salita’s father was an academic, but he had been denied a posting at prestigious universities because of his Jewish last name.
Salita’s brother, Michael, who is nine years his elder, got into fights because he was Jewish. When Salita was a child, a fellow student called him a Zhyd – a derogatory term for a Jew – and being a “weak kid,” his parents enrolled him in a karate club. When Salita’s family immigrated to New York, they didn’t have much money, so they signed him up for karate only once a week.
“The trainer was kind enough to recognize the challenges of my family and allowed me to come over there, and that progressed to boxing,” Salita recounted.
BOXING WASN’T a hobby for Salita, even from the outset. While the “traditional path of the Soviet Jewish community in the United States has been through education and business,” according to the promoter, at that stage in his life it was boxing.
“It was an outlet for being able to deal with all the things that were going on in my life,” he said.
He first went to the Starrett City Boxing Club at 13 because it was a free municipal-funded program, training alongside inner city youth who became Olympians and world and national champions. At boxing trainer Jimmy O’Pharrow’s gym, he had to grind and work hard.
“It was, as they say, a baptism by fire – boxing by fire,” said Salita. “You either want it or you don’t – and I wanted it.”
Joining O’Pharrow’s gym set the tone for the rest of Salita’s life, just as a year later, when he connected with Chabad-Lubavitch. The philosophies of Starrett City and the Chabad House, almost an Athens and Jerusalem, inspired the Soviet immigrant, whose Judaism had been repressed, to take pride in his religion. O’Pharrow had grown up during segregation as an African-American, and Salita trained alongside inner city, Black youth who were facing their own challenges.
“There’s a lot of pride and a lot of vocalization from that community in terms of how they feel they’ve been mistreated and when things go wrong,” Salita explained.
At Chabad, Salita imbibed a very proud Judaism that sought to represent the faith in the country, ensuring public hanukkiah lightings for Jewish communities. In the same way that Jewish symbols like the light of the hanukkiah were placed for all to see, Salita ensured that he represented his faith in his sport.
He took on the nickname “Star of David,” which he wore on his equipment, and would sometimes go to the boxing ring backed by the Israeli and American flags. At times, this was met with antisemitic taunts and shouts. But Salita was not a “weak kid” being taunted at school in Odesa; he didn’t back down from who he was.
“The great thing about the United States is that the law of the land is that who you are will not stand in the way of what you can become,” Salita said.
boxing and Judaism: Disciplines that complement each other?
SALITA EXPLAINED that boxing and Judaism were disciplines that complement each other. Boxing is a “very responsible sport” in which the focus is on the individual fighter. Boxers try to “take each other’s heads off,” even in training sessions against other trained fighters. Many boxers found strength in religion.
“I do believe that because boxing is such an intense experience, emotionally, spiritually, even before you get into the ring, before the athletic competition, but just the mental challenge of being able to even train and certainly to box in front of thousands of people,” Salita expounded.
“That is a very challenging thing to do; it tests you, and it builds you up. Boxing has many ways can build your character, build you spiritually, and strengthen you. In Judaism, you have to be the best that you can be and be responsible for whatever it is that you practice.”
As Salita grew in his faith, keeping Shabbat and Jewish holidays clashed with the dates of some of his boxing matches.
In 2000, when Salita was 17 years old and not yet Shabbat observant, he competed in the Golden Gloves, which he noted is the biggest amateur boxing tournament in the world by the number of competitors. The competition bled into Friday night, when Shabbat began. Although he was uncomfortable about it, he boxed – and lost to a close decision.
Salita said he took an important step in his life, religiously and as an athlete, six months later when he was chosen to compete in the US National Boxing Tournament – one of the most prestigious tournaments in American amateur boxing. The tournament continues throughout the week as boxers are eliminated, with the finals on Saturday afternoon, during Shabbat.
“It was the year that I was graduating from high school, so I had no money,” Salita recalled. “My goal was to become a professional boxer, and winning one of these tournaments propels you and gives you the ability to sign a lucrative contract with a high-level boxing promoter.”
Salita went to his rabbi with the dilemma and, with inspiration from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, he concluded that if he observed Shabbat, “good things would happen.”
“I have a belief and trust in God, and sometimes your intuition just tells you that it’s the right thing to do,” he said.
THERE WERE many talented fighters favored to win that tournament, but Salita was not one of them. However, as the tournament began, every time Salita took to the ring, he beat not only his opponent but the odds. Match after match, he kept winning, until he reached the semi-finals and beat Keith Mason, an amateur boxing world champion and national champion, in a surprise upset.
When sports journalist Dylan Hernández interviewed Salita about his semi-finals victory, he asked the Jewish boxer what the US could expect in the finals. Salita said that he wouldn’t box in the finals, having already told the organizers he was observing Shabbat. They had told him he would be disqualified if he didn’t attend the last match.
Hernández queried the organizers about the matter, and they changed the fight time to after Shabbat – and Salita won the match.
He returned for the next annual Golden Gloves tournament in 2001, but this time he didn’t ignore the uncomfortable feeling and told the organizers that he wouldn’t be fighting on Shabbat. The organizers rescheduled his final fight to Thursday night, which he won.
As he became more of a public figure, the responsibility to celebrate his identity and keep Shabbat became even more important for him.
“Yes, there are challenges. Yes, some TV executives are going to say it’s ‘too Jewish.’ It’s this or that. However, if I’m good enough and I keep persevering, I’ll be able to make it,” said Salita, again praising the freedom of religion offered by America.
“I can openly be Jewish. I felt that it was my responsibility – I felt that I had to be open about who I am and proud of my journey and my growth. And that was my immigration experience, and that’s a compliment to the United States of America.”
When Salita became a professional at 19 years old and signed a contract with promoter Bob Arum, he made sure that it contained a clause that none of his fights would be scheduled on Shabbat or Jewish holidays.
The Jewish boxer won his first title in 2004 and captured a world title on HBO in a Madison Square Garden fight, ultimately earning five professional titles. In 2023, Salita was inducted into the New York State Boxing Hall of Fame in recognition of his stellar career.
SALITA BELIEVES that the peak of his career was from 2004 to 2007, when he was 22 to 26. At that age, he was able to perform at his highest physical level. He said he could have continued physically when he stepped away from the ring at age 31, but his heart wasn’t in it anymore.
“I didn’t want to die in the ring anymore,” Salita explained. “When I was at the age when I started boxing up until close to the end of my career, I would have died to win – literally speaking – I would have died to win. And I would do whatever I had to do in the gym and training, not eating, not drinking, to make the weight for the fight.
“My mentality was always that I’m going to go to the enemy and win. Then, as you grow older, you find meaning in different and other things, and you can still push yourself, but the mindset isn’t there to that extreme.”
However, although Salita stopped boxing, he never stopped fighting. As a boxer, he had learned how to promote his brand, and he took the lessons of his boxing career to break into the promotion of the sport. He said it is difficult to get into the field, which is occupied by key promotional players.
Just like when he first began as a fighter, he needed to start from the bottom before he worked his way up to promoting major events. To support his career as a promoter, he’s pursuing studies at Northwestern Law School.
“In this aspect of the business, there are a lot of challenges,” he said.
“And people want to take your lunch,” he added.Boxing gave Salita the fortitude to succeed, which he attributes to a forward-looking mentality and the will not to be intimidated.
SALITA IS grateful to still be involved in the sport he loves and has been engaged in for most of his life. There is a thrill in promoting events, developing boxers from humble backgrounds to fighting for world titles. Perhaps not as exhilarating as being in the ring himself, but when his fighters win, he can taste that old excitement.
Boxing has changed since Salita first put on the gloves. It has become a much more international sport, with events taking place all around the globe. The boxing world is also more connected through social media. Online, Salita represents his Jewish beliefs and roots, and he is proud and grateful that he can openly express his identity.
This has incurred numerous emails, social media posts, and private messages attacking him with threatening, hateful, and antisemitic slurs, but that has never stopped Salita before. He continues to win, earning US Boxing Association Promoter of the Year award and the USBA Fight of the Year in 2024.
Salita said that boxing is a sport for everyone – as an after-school activity, a hobby, or, if one works hard, a profession. He advises anyone who wants to take the sport as seriously as he did to seek out good and responsible people who know what they’re doing [to guide them].
“I think boxing teaches confidence, physical fitness, and mental fitness,” Salita said. “It’s a great sport, and I’m certainly a fan of it.”
When dealing with animosity for expressing one’s identity, Salita said the Jewish people have survived for thousands of years, and while hatred can affect a person, it’s important to take a positive approach and do what one feels is right.
Salita found that at the end of the day, people respected him and respected the values he represents. Everyone has to find a way to do this for oneself, appropriate for one’s own settings.
“Everyone has their journey,” Salita said. “I can only speak of what happened to me and what I found meaningful to myself. Everyone has their life, everyone has their challenge.”
This article was originally published at www.jpost.com
