Philly’s Brittany ‘Bam’ Rogers is all business when it comes to boxing
A woman in a male-dominated sport, Rogers has been faced with "people that thought I didn’t know what I was talking about." But she's earned respect. “She’s made so many friends in the business, people trust her,” Joe Hand Jr. said.
Brittany Ann Michelle Rogers was meant to be in boxing. After all, her first three initials are B.A.M. — like the sound of a boxer jabbing a punching bag. It’s what the boxing community calls her, and it was her nickname before she even got involved in the sport.
Rogers, 31, is a boxing department product manager at Joe Hand Promotions, a company that helps commercial venues present sporting events such as Showtime Championship Boxing, UFC, and WWE. Rogers joined Joe Hand in 2014, and has spent time working with boxing promoter J Russell Peltz.
Boxing is part of who the Philadelphia native is. Her father was an amateur boxer, and it became their way to bond. Peltz remembers how he’d see her comments on a local boxing website even though he didn’t always agree with her takes. She broke down the intricacies of boxing like few women he’d seen.
“She actually knew about the boxing styles,” Peltz said. “I’d never really been around a woman who could do that. I was with Bam every day of the week, and she was talking about styles, who’s got the best right hand, and who is the best defensive fighter.”
That’s why she became Peltz’s first intern. Soon, it was clear that she could handle herself in the boxing business. So the training wheels came off.
Rogers thought she was too young, but Peltz suggested she get her boxing license. He told her about how he started at 22, which was her age. Also, he was a Temple grad, which added to the parallels because Rogers was a senior at the university. Rogers took his advice and became the youngest woman boxing promoter in the country.
“I was able to get everything done pretty seamlessly,” Rogers said. “I don’t want to say it wasn’t that difficult, because sometimes I would come across people that thought I didn’t know what I was talking about. The initial backlash that I got, I just kept moving forward and making relationships. Then, little by little, one person would validate that I was there for business reasons.”
It was a quick rise for someone who volunteered at the Blue Horizon just to be around the sport. A once little-known intern under Peltz’s guidance worked her way into relevance.
Joe Hand Jr., president of Joe Hand Promotions, said Rogers’ profile now is even bigger. Sometimes when he’s on calls with boxing promoters to discuss the pay-per-view side of the business, the promoters ask for Rogers to be included in the conversation.
“She’s made so many friends in the business, people trust her,” Hand said. “They value her input.”
Rogers has helped promote more than 75 boxing events in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. A lot of her work has been done through Bam Boxing Promotions at local casinos. Now, she’s focusing more on the TV side with Joe Hand Promotions.
Rogers still does three or four live events a year at Parx Casino, but those plans are on hold throughout 2020 due to the pandemic.
Even though she has been around the sport more than a decade, there’s a sense that she’s just getting started.
“For me, it was about learning as much as I could about both aspects of the business,” Rogers said. “I want to stay in the live events business, but I think there’s so much more to the sport that I want to learn. I told myself that my 20s and the bulk of my 30s is going to be learning.”