Boxing promoter Joseph DeGuardia accused of sexual harassment
An amateur fighter who once said boxing is her life has pitted herself against powerful prizefighting promoter Joseph M. DeGuardia.
Georgene Zagarino accused DeGuardia and Star Boxing Inc. of gender discrimination, subjecting her to a hostile workplace and quid pro quo sexual harassment, in a complaint filed Jan. 18 in Westchester Supreme Court.
DeGuardia did not respond to an email asking for his side of the story.
DeGuardia, of Hartsdale, is the son of the late Joseph DeGuardia Sr., a prizefighter in the 1940s and 1950s and founder of the renowned Morris Park Boxing Club in the Bronx.
DeGuardia Jr. won a Golden Gloves title in 1988 while attending law school, worked as an assistant prosecutor in the Bronx and founded Star Boxing in 1992. He moved the gym from the Bronx to Elmsford and then to Harrison.
He has managed well-known prizefighters, such as former light heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver, and he promotes boxing matches.
Zagarino is a member of the Fighting Zagarino Family, as an interviewer depicted her father, uncle, brothers, cousins and herself.
“I love it,” she said in the 2016 interview at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. “Boxing is home. The ring is home. I’m mesmerized by it all. Each day I find something I love about boxing.”
DeGuardia had hired her in 2015 as a part-time logistics intern, according to the complaint, working 10 to 14 hours a week plus weekends when boxing matches were staged, for which, she says, she was never paid.
DeGuardia often made inappropriate comments, Zagarino claims. In 2018, for instance, he allegedly offered to take her for a ride on his motorcycle that would be their “dirty little secret.”
Her complaint rests largely on outside-of-the-ring sparring at a 2019 boxing event at Turning Stone Casino in Verona, New York, where in essence, she claims, DeGuardia tried to strike below the belt.
DeGuardia asked Zagarino to pick up credentials in his suite. But there were no credentials, according to the complaint, and he asked her to substitute that night as a ring girl ”” the provocatively dressed woman who steps into the ring between rounds to display a sign with the number for the following round.
She says she tried on the outfits in a bathroom, changed back to her clothing, and told DeGuardia that she would not do the job.
He became angry, according to the complaint, and pushed her against a wall. Using a kind of tying up technique, she placed her hands on his chest to create distance between them and said he was a married man and his conduct was unacceptable.
“DeGuardia stated that he planned on getting divorced,” the complaint states, “to which Ms. Zagarino replied that she was engaged and had no interest in DeGuardia.
“DeGuardia, however, would not take no for an answer and insisted that Ms. Zagarino cheat on her fiancé with him before getting married because she would eventually engage in infidelity during their marriage.”
Then, she claims, he placed his hands on her back and buttocks “and stated that he can keep a secret and wanted them to be ‘dirty.'”
She broke the clinch, according to the complaint, and demanded that he pay her for working the weekend.
DeGuardia allegedly replied that he would pay her $700 if she woke up with him in the morning. She left the suite, the complaint states, finished working that evening and then left the hotel.
Zagarino is asking the court to declare that DeGuardia and Star Boxing violated state human rights laws and to award her unspecified damages.
She is represented by Manhattan attorney Nina A. Ovrutsky.