Evan Haiman has spent the past 30 years creating diverse content for broadcast platforms - from sports to comedy to music. He started his career at Major League Baseball, went on to work at HBO, Comedy Channel and Warner Brothers and recently led the development of a new Country Music Lifestyle Channel. 

He was in between projects, waiting for funding while working on a civil rights documentary that he started four years ago and a music documentary that he’s been shooting the last two years in Nashville when he came across a story in The New York Almanack written by longtime Sullivan County Historian and author John Conway that would cause him to put on hold everything else in his life.

“I read this really interesting article last May that John wrote about boxers who trained in the Catskills,” said Haiman. “I was totally intrigued because I grew up with a dad who is an immigrant who loved boxing and I’m like, ‘all these boxers trained in the Catskills?’ Then I started going down this rabbit hole on the internet and like wow, John really is spot on – but it’s even deeper than that. I just thought this would be a fun project while I’m waiting on other stuff. I have to keep busy.” 

Several dozen interviews over more than 100 hours later with boxers, historians, hotel owners, hotel guests and journalists, Haiman says the plan is have his documentary, “Ringside in the Mountains: A History of Boxing in the Catskills” entered into film festivals, with the hope of broadcast distribution in 2026. 

As he completes final editing, Haiman shares the journey of film making and this unique chapter in the history of the resort industry in the Catskills.

Barry Lewis: What intrigued you about boxing in the Catskills to make it your first documentary? 

Evan Haiman: I love reading, I love sports, I love history and I loved the subject, so this was almost like an excuse. And I wanted to learn how to do a documentary on my own. I thought this would be a perfect tool to learn. I read 35 books about boxing. Mike Stanton wrote about Rocky Marciano; I called and interviewed him. I would talk to one person who would send me here, then I’d reach out to (Gerry) Cooney, then (Ray) Mancini, this is the one project where it’s not about getting a ‘no’ it’s just about finding them and seeing if they are available. Everybody wants to talk about this. 

BL: What was your knowledge of the Catskills?

EH: I wasn’t like you or the rest of the writers who know so much about this area. My parents didn’t go up to the Catskills. We went once to the Echo Hotel. I had knowledge being a little Jewish boy from Brooklyn. I thought it was cool and we bought a house here in Rock Hill in 2000. We fell in love with this area.

BL: The hotels are gone and so are many of the boxers. How difficult was that to find out things?

EH: This is a time and place that doesn’t exist anymore. The footage is very difficult to find. The photos are limited. Facebook was the easiest thing for me because if I posted on sites, A “Borscht Belt” site or a “Sonny Liston” site that’s how I got a lot of outreach. The other problem is I’m not focusing on the fights. I’m focusing on this specific story about training. It’s limited. Once you explain why the athletes went up there, because the mountains were good for breathing, good for the legs, I decided to change the story around to make it more about these boxers, little vignettes of fighters through the years. 

BL: Were you surprised how many hotels were training grounds for these boxers?

EH: Yes. I thought it was all Kutsher’s, Concord, Grossinger’s, but then you find out even the Nemerson had boxers, the Evans had James Braddock. If you saw the movie Cinderella Man, they never touch on the Evans. Never on his training there. It’s not part of the conversation. And basically, that is the crux of his development as a boxer, because he came up here. There’s a lot of those stories like that. As I kept going, I found, oh, this place had it, this small hotel. The Granit had Chuck Wepner. The Avon Lodge had this Jewish boxer, Bernie “Schoolboy” Friedkin. There were 12 hotels that opened their doors. I have a list at the end of the film. I’m sure someone is going to call me and say ‘you forgot about Joe Lipschitz who trained at...’ I only can find what I can find. 

BL: What surprised you?

EH: What still sticks in my mind as we kept editing was the Sonny Liston stories. Every single person who I ever talked to, sent me an email, every story about Liston is what a wonderful man he was. Which is the antithesis of all the coverage. He is like the meanest sob, everybody hated him, but when he was at the Pines Hotel, he’d ride his bike and run on the streets and kids would watch him. I have pictures of him with these kids. He loved kids because they never criticized him. Never said anything negative about him.

BL: Were the boxers aware of its history?

EH: Mancini said he wanted to train here and be like Rocky Marciano. He was so honored that he got to stay in the same cabin as Marciano at Grossinger’s. I was able to talk with Roberto Duran, with his daughter translating. I asked him what made you go up to the Catskills? Did you know about it beforehand? I figured I’d get, because everybody else went, like Mancini. Duran says, ‘I had no idea.’ He’s from Panama. He had no clue. They were training at a Times Square gym. Don King said, ‘We got to get out of here. Too many people. I’m going to take you somewhere.’ He took him to train at Grossinger’s.  

BL: What made the hotels so appealing for boxers?

EH: The typography of the Catskills is the first reason. These boxers go up there, it’s only two hours away from Manhattan, the center of the boxing universe is Madison Square Garden. They run the mountains, it’s great for their legs, great for their stamina, they get free meals, free hotel and they’re allowed to focus on the sport. They want seclusion. They want you away from your family, women. The hotels take care of all that. 

BL: The hotels also welcomed minorities. 

EH: Where else would Rocky Marciano be able to train because he has Hispanic and Black sparring partners. They couldn’t go anywhere. Ezzard Charles couldn’t go to places. Think about it, you can go anywhere with your training group somewhere in the Catskills. You can’t go anywhere else in the country. People forget, these hotels opened their doors at a time when nobody else would. There is something really cool about the fact that these Jewish immigrants weren’t allowed to stay in hotels, so they built their own resorts, and inevitably they allowed Black and Hispanic people to come there.  

BL: This adds to the mystique of the Borscht Belt.

EH: Totally. If you think about the Borscht Belt you think of comedy. That’s what really broke out. The seeds were planted at every hotel. Then if you start digging a little deeper, it’s the music, the musicians who came out of there. Here’s another little story that people didn’t realize. It’s a nice footnote. It’s a sweet little story that I wanted to tell.