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.