Memorable megafights cement Las Vegas’ stature as heavyweight

When Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr. step into the ring Saturday at the MGM Grand Garden, Las Vegas' reputation as boxing's capital will be reaffirmed.

With a record gate of approximately $19 million already ensured and the possibility of a record for pay-per-view sales, the super welterweight title bout, being billed as "The World Awaits," is the latest megafight to hit Las Vegas.

The town has been home to title fights since 1960, when Benny Paret beat Don Jordan for the world welterweight title. Things picked up during that decade as Muhammad Ali, Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson fought at the old Convention Center rotunda. The 1970s saw big names such as Ali, George Foreman, Ron Lyle, Ken Norton and Roberto Duran do battle here, mostly at Caesars Palace.

But it wasn't until the 1980s that megafights in Las Vegas took hold. Las Vegas' reputation as the center of the boxing world began Oct. 2, 1980, with an aging Ali getting pummeled by Larry Holmes and two years later when Holmes beat Gerry Cooney.

That reputation was cemented throughout the decade with some of the sport's most memorable moments, thanks to Sugar Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns and Marvin Hagler. In the 1990s, Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield were the main draws, followed later in the decade by De La Hoya.

De La Hoya has been involved in five of the top 10 grossing fights in the history of Las Vegas boxing, according to statistics from the Nevada Athletic Commission. De La Hoya's biggest fight to date in terms of gross sales was Sept. 18, 1999, when he fought Felix Trinidad at Mandalay Bay. That fight, which drew a crowd of 11,184, produced a gate of $12,949,500.

"This, by far, has to be the biggest," De La Hoya said of his fight with Mayweather, which will be shown locally on closed-circuit television at the MGM, Mirage and Mandalay Bay as well as on pay per view. "This promotion, it has been the biggest. The sponsors. HBO. The various magazine photo shoots. When I was involved in the Trinidad fight, we didn't have this. We didn't have sponsors putting our images on (beer) cans, stuff like that."

De La Hoya's Golden Boy Promotions has been overseeing the marketing for this fight, and it has lined up several sponsors such as Tecate beer, Southwest Airlines and Dr Pepper to help sell the promotion. HBO also has been running a reality series on the two camps. It's no-holds barred, and the show's "De La Hoya-Mayweather 24/7" tag sells the fact that the two fighters are in the spotlight around the clock.

"We're bringing something new and fresh to the table," De La Hoya said. "It's a whole different promotion."

Is it? Beer companies have sponsored megafights in Las Vegas since the early 1980s, and while the HBO series is considered by many to be outside-of-the-box thinking, it reaches a limited audience. Only those who subscribe to HBO have access to the show.

Where this fight might have a media edge over previous Las Vegas megafights is the Internet. With Web sites dedicated to the two fighters, blogs and boxing chat rooms, fans have access to more information than ever before. That will help generate interest in the fight. The pay-per-view record for a nonheavyweight fight is 1.4 million subscriptions for De La Hoya-Trinidad. This fight could challenge the overall pay-per-view mark of 2 million for the Tyson-Lewis fight in 2002.

"If we had this kind of promotion when I fought the (Julio Cesar) Chavezes, Trinidads and (Pernell) Whitakers, those fights should have easily surpassed what they did (in revenue)," De La Hoya said.

This fight figures to rekindle interest among boxing fans who have become disillusioned with the sport over the years and to attract mainstream sports fans because of the star power of the fighters.

But columnist and author Tim Dahlberg said it might be awhile before boxing sees a fight this big again.

"(Boxing) has done a poor job of marketing itself," said Dahlberg, a longtime boxing writer who is a columnist for The Associated Press and is the author of "Fight Town," a history of boxing in Las Vegas. "Boxing is starved for a big event, and they've done a good job of selling this as a big fight. It has a lot of the elements -- good vs. evil, the best in the sport vs. the guy who wants to be the best. This definitely qualifies as a megafight."

Dave Cokin, a local talk show host and longtime boxing analyst, agrees that this particular promotion has been marketed well and that the sport is in such woeful shape that De La Hoya-Mayweather gets megafight status almost by default.

"The game, in essence, has been destroyed," Cokin said. "Nobody knows who anybody is in boxing anymore.

"I grew up with eight weight classes. Even the casual fan could name 20 to 30 good fighters. Go ahead and ask a fan today to name five fighters who are good."

Cokin said the rising interest in mixed martial arts combined with the continuing decline in boxing makes it hard for even the most devout boxing fans to maintain a high level of interest.

"It's not Oscar's or Floyd's fault, but together they held belts in nine different divisions with four different championships," Cokin said. "It's a good lesson for other sports because when you try to make every fight a big title fight ... it gets to the point where there are no title fights."

Most boxing experts agree that this one qualifies for megafight status. Bert Sugar, the noted boxing historian and author, said his definition of a megafight is: "When it transcends the event itself."

Sugar said this is the biggest fight in years, for any weight class.

"I'm calling this 'The Fight of the Century' even though we're only seven years into the century," he said. "The elements are all there along with what I call the imponderables. I don't know anyone who has fully figured this one out. De La Hoya's stamina, is it real or imagined? Floyd Mayweather's hand speed is obvious. But how fragile are his hands?"

Showtime boxing analyst Al Bernstein also believes that when a fight dominates the local landscape of activities, it qualifies as a megafight in Las Vegas.

"That's a tricky definition," Bernstein said. "Because the landscape has changed over the years in terms of entertainment. The number of major events, concerts, mixed martial arts, the (National Finals) Rodeo, have grown. The number of casinos has grown. And when you factor all of those things together, it's hard for one event to dominate.

"I think this one qualifies because of all the attention it has been receiving in the mainstream media. It's not just the boxing writers writing about it."

Marc Ratner, a former executive director of the Nevada Athletic Commission, concurred.

"When it becomes a front-page story instead of a sports story, when you make it an event, not just a sporting event, that's when you have a megafight," Ratner said. "When people say, 'I've got to be there, no matter how much it costs,' that's a megafight."

Cokin said the setting has as much to do with an event reaching megafight status as the fighters themselves.

"The ultimate megafight to me is a warm night, outdoors at Caesars Palace with two name fighters and that electricity that's in the air," Cokin said. "When you can feel that buzz, that's when you know you're at a megafight."

Las Vegas' last such blockbuster bout came in 1999. But it was indoors at the Thomas & Mack Center when Lennox Lewis and Holyfield fought in a rematch of their first fight earlier that year in New York. A crowd of 17,078 generated a record gate of $16,860,300.

The biggest attendance figure for a Las Vegas fight came in 1982, when 29,214 crammed into a specially constructed outdoor arena at Caesars Palace to see Holmes defeat Cooney. That fight generated a live gate of $6,239,050, which speaks more to the price of tickets then than anything else.

The top ticket price for Holmes-Cooney was $600, with the lowest being $50. The face value for the top seat for Saturday's fight is $2,000. Despite having 13,000 fewer seats, the MGM Grand Garden, with a capacity of 16,000, will generate three times as much at the gate as Holmes-Cooney, and it could be a long time before any fight comes close to matching it.

"Boxing is starved for a big event," Dahlberg said. "But this might be the last one you see for a while given the decline of the sport."

But veteran boxing publicist Bill Kaplan said the sport will be fine.

"I'm not concerned," said Kaplan, who has been working in boxing for 40 years. "If Oscar wins, he'll fight again, in my opinion. He's the only superstar we have.

"But even if he doesn't fight again, somebody's always around to take their place. There are a lot of good fighters out there and good fights that can be made. It may take some time, but there'll be big megafights after this one."

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SOURCE: Nevada Athletic Commission