Valerie McConnell came home to Chattanooga this weekend to help another Brainerd High School graduate, Tony Boston, stage the inaugural "Next Big Hit" talent competition at the Chattanooga Convention Center tonight.
Next weekend she'll be back home in Las Vegas doing interviews and video reports leading up to and following the much publicized boxing match between undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr. and mixed martial arts star Conor McGregor.
As the namesake, host and producer of "Val TV" and a freelance programming producer, she covers a gamut of entertainment and sports happenings, but boxing has been a big part of her varied enterprises since she was hired in 2002 by the CMX company owned by brothers Eric and Tony Brown, working with flamboyant promoter Don King.
McConnell has become an accepted regular to boxing cards set up by the promotion companies of Roy Jones Jr. and Mayweather, among others, and she worked the Los Angeles stop of the four-city tour kicking off the Mayweather-McGregor official hype. She has worked the subsequent media-open workouts as well.
Next week she'll be at the weigh-in and the post-fight news conference, and she has been invited to the Mayweather Foundation's Titans of the Trade Breakfast of Champions the morning after the fight.
"It's for women who have achieved in sports. It's very prestigious," McConnell said Thursday night. "I got a $5,000 sponsorship from the Vitae Global company - they distribute a machine that turns tap water into alkaline healthy water (among other products) - and I'm going to do a commercial and a TV special with footage from the athletes."
If she and host and executive producer Boston have their way, "The Next Big Hit" will develop into a television series from different cities. After the very first event tonight, they have one tentatively planned for Vegas.
Contestants have to be 13 or older, and one of tonight's participants is 42. They submitted videos to www.thenextbighit.com to begin the process of getting to Chattanooga. The contestants are from as far away as Chicago and New Jersey, as well as Atlanta.
The celebrity judges include rappers Bone Crusher, Lil' Kane and Pastor Troy.
Tickets cost $20, $10 for ages 4-11 with 3-under free. The doors will open at 6 p.m., and the program begins at 7.
"We're hoping it will have an impact like 'American Idol' or 'The Voice,'" said Boston, who lives in Chattanooga and works as a bail bondsman (for Key Bonding) but has a second life as T Boston, the "Celebrity Hype Man" featured on the June/July cover of Soul Central magazine.
"We welcome gospel, R&B, country music - all types of music, and all races," Boston said. "We want to make these kids' dreams come true. Not everybody can be on TV, but you can make a lot of money being an underground artist."
McConnell is in Chattanooga for the first time since late last November, staying with cousin Sandra Kelly. She's the programming coordinator.
"Valerie's a good coordinator," said Peter Allman, a Vegas-based entertainment journalist and now a film producer who remembers "showing her the ropes of interviewing" in her early years in the business. Over time he's written about her and appeared on her show, and they've worked together on some projects.
"Valerie's the kind of person who wants to help people. She does that in her own way," Allman said, explaining that he has invited McConnell to a "celebrity screening" on Aug. 30 of his new documentary "Winds of Freedom" about global peace.
The daughter of Malcolm and Alberta McConnell, and then stepfather Sylvester Wright, Valerie was in Brainerd's 1978 graduating class but actually finished the previous summer. She was a finalist in the Miss Black Chattanooga pageant in 1979.
After a short time in community college she went to Tennessee State for two years, majoring in business administration, and then got a taste of the entertainment scene in Los Angeles.
"What began as a summer vacation with my best friend from college turned into a working relation with DiJon Aragon Public Relations in Beverly Hills," McConnell recalled. "I studied TV and acting for six months and stayed in a house that Judy Garland owned. It became a studio and then an acting school.
"But then I had to come home and I volunteered at WTCI in Chattanooga."
Soon she went to DeVry Institute in Atlanta but moved after a year to the one in Los Angeles, where she doubled as a dancer.
She became a regular for more than a decade on the classic "Soul Train" show. And she wrote, directed and starred in a "TV adventure" called "The Egyptian Cowgirl."
She got a bit part in Eddie Murphy's "Harlem Nights" and even got one line, to Murphy, but it was left on the cutting-room floor, as they say. She also appeared in Michael Jackson's famous "Remember the Time" video.
"The excitement of the entertainment industry thrilled me, but I knew that setting goals was the key to my success in front of and behind the camera," she said. "Those things my parents instilled in me made it a reality."
Contact Ron Bush at rbush@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6291.