Boxe EOTTM

From Beirut to the Bell Centre

Camille Estephan arrived in Montreal as a teenager in 1986, his family having left Lebanon during the civil war. He built a career in financial services, which he never left, and came to boxing sideways: in 2008 he met the heavyweight Bermane Stiverne and began managing him. That relationship produced the company's first significant result when Stiverne beat Chris Arreola for the WBC heavyweight title in 2014, and its first hard lesson when Stiverne lost the belt to Deontay Wilder in 2015 and Estephan parted with him over differences with Don King's side of the operation.

By 2017 Estephan had displaced Yvon Michel as the dominant promoter in a city that had been Michel's for years, and Eye of the Tiger absorbed Interbox, the other long-running Quebec promotional company. Day-to-day matchmaking and operations fell largely to Antonin Decarie, a former welterweight, while Estephan kept his other job. The trainer most closely associated with the company's fighters is Marc Ramsay, whose gym in Montreal has supplied much of the roster.

The stated philosophy is unsentimental about protecting records. "Challenge is very, very important," Estephan has said of how prospects are moved. "Without the risk there is no reward." The matchmaking bears that out: the company's young fighters tend to meet former world title challengers several fights earlier than is conventional.

The fighters who built the name

David Lemieux was the company's foundation and its most closely aligned fighter — a former IBF middleweight champion who fought Gennady Golovkin in 2015 and Billy Joe Saunders in 2017, both on HBO, and whose defeats did as much for the promotion's profile as his wins. Steven Butler, once talked about in Quebec in the terms usually reserved for hockey players, lost to Brandon Cook at the Bell Centre in January 2017 and is still on the roster nine years later, fighting Ramadan Hiseni for the WBA Continental super-middleweight belt on 5 March 2026.

The current generation is largely imported talent trained locally. Christian Mbilli, the Cameroon-born super-middleweight who joined the company in 2020, is co-promoted with Top Rank. Osleys Iglesias, a Cuban super-middleweight with a knockout in 14 of his 15 wins, beat Pavel Silyagin at the Casino de Montréal on 9 April 2026 and now holds the IBF and IBO belts. The Kazakh Batyr Jukembayev and Sadriddin Ahkmedov came through the same pipeline a decade earlier.

A season built on Thursdays

The 2026 calendar shows what the company actually is: a regular-season operation rather than a promoter of occasional spectaculars. It opened on 5 February with Mehmet Unal against Altin Zogaj at the Cabaret du Casino de Montréal, followed with Butler on 5 March, Iglesias against Silyagin on 9 April, and Albert Ramirez defending the WBA interim light-heavyweight title against Lerrone Richards on 4 June — all at the same casino room, all on a Thursday.

On 11 June the promotion staged its first card at the Théâtre Capitole in Quebec City, and gave the main event to a local 21-year-old. Wilkens Mathieu stopped Esquiva Falcão in the eighth round, the first man to stop the Brazilian Olympic silver medallist, going to 16-0 with 11 knockouts and keeping his NABF super-middleweight title. Referee Steve St-Germain waved it off at the end of the round after Falcão had been dropped and beaten the count. It was Mathieu's first time headlining.

3 September: the most recent night

The last card before the autumn dates ran on Thursday 3 September at the Cabaret du Casino de Montréal, with Lenar Perez defending his WBA Continental Americas cruiserweight title against Thabiso Mchunu over ten rounds. Perez, a Cuban with one of the more decorated amateur records in the division, had won his first 14 professional fights inside the distance and had gone to Russia to beat Aleksei Egorov. Mchunu, 25-8 going in, had previously challenged Ilunga Makabu for the WBC title and Oleksandr Usyk for the WBO.

It was not straightforward. A right hook put Perez on the canvas in the fifth. He recovered, forced Mchunu to take a knee from an uppercut in the sixth, and finished it in the eighth with a right hand that dropped the South African twice before the referee stepped in. Perez left at 17-0 with 15 knockouts. Estephan's pre-fight line — "we believe Lenar Perez is the best cruiserweight in the world" — was the point of the exercise: a name opponent, beaten conclusively, before asking for a world title fight.

The rest of the card ran to type. Moreno Fendero kept his WBC Continental Americas super-middleweight belt against the Montreal rival Stéphane Fondjo on scores of 99-90, 97-92 and 99-90. Jhon Orobio stopped Antonio Moran in the fourth to take both the WBC and WBA Continental Americas super-lightweight titles. Wyatt Sanford stopped Costin Ion in two, Victor Tremblay won in three, and Keven Beausejour, signed in February and three fights into his career, finished Leonel Silva Salas in the first with body shots. The show went out on Punching Grace in Quebec and DAZN internationally, with preliminaries on TVA Sports.

What is on sale: 8 October and 12 November

The 8 October return to the Théâtre Capitole is the largest thing the company has attempted in Quebec City: nine titles on one card, three of them world championships. Estephan has called that "simply unprecedented" for the province, and it is the reason the show is being billed as a record gala.

Iglesias, 15-0 with 14 knockouts, defends the unified IBF and IBO super-middleweight titles against the unbeaten Dane Oliver Zaren, 19-0-1 with 8 knockouts, who has said he is not intimidated and is coming to Quebec to win. Mathieu, still 21, defends the NABF belt against Vladimir Shishkin, 17-2, and has said he already believes he can beat anyone at 168lb. Leïla Beaudoin, from Bas-Saint-Laurent, makes the first defence of her WBA interim super-featherweight title against Brisa Alfonzo, ranked second in the division. Below that sit Dzmitry Asanau at 13-0 against Luis Santana at 16-0 — both signed to the same promoter, which is rare — Imam Khataev defending the NABF light-heavyweight title, Thomas Chabot defending a WBC continental featherweight belt, and bouts for Erik Israyelyan, Daylen Pepin, Jacob Blais and Yoan Trottier.

The second date on sale, Thursday 12 November, is a return to the Casino de Montréal with the matchups still to be announced — normal practice here, where the date and the venue are fixed long before the fights are. The company has already published its 2027 schedule on the same basis: five Thursdays at the casino on 28 January, 25 March, 10 June, 9 September and 11 November, sold as a season ticket as well as singly.

Standing, September 2026

Eye of the Tiger now functions as the effective home promoter of Quebec boxing, with a house venue, a fixed slot in the week, a domestic broadcaster in Punching Grace, international distribution through DAZN, and co-promotional routes into the United States via Top Rank. The season opener in February sold out.

The open question is the ceiling. The model depends on moving unbeaten fighters through continental and interim belts quickly enough to force mandatory positions, and Estephan has been publicly angling for the biggest available fights, including pitching a Benavidez-Ramirez bout at Riyadh Season. A unified champion in Iglesias and a 21-year-old at NABF level in Mathieu give the company two credible pushes at once; 8 October is where both are tested.