Boxing as a sport of ultimate swagger
Arlington, Texas On the day of Manny Pacquiao's expected Saturday night victory over Joshua Clottey — which Pacquiao eventually did win — in the massive marvel called Cowboys Stadium that was built for both football and fascination, boxing kept strutting like a peacock.
It is a sport with the ultimate swagger. Outsiders immediately see attitude. Boxing doesn't see that at all. It thinks that's how all of life is, or should be.
The prime example is the bigger-than-life stadium where promoter Bob Arum brought the fight.
The place is made for football and can seat nearly 100,000 — or more if they sell what they call "Party Passes", Texas talk for standing room only.
They sold some of those for the fight, at $35 (Dh128.45) each (not including the going rate for parking lots at anywhere up to $60), meaning that all 45,000 seats promoters had deemed as the capacity for boxing had been sold.
This sort of success will bring Arum and Top Rank Promotions back, probably in midsummer, as Arum extends his campaign to take his sport out and about to bigger arenas and away from the "same old" Las Vegas casinos.
Separate fights
Arum has said he will have a card that features Cesar Chavez Jr, and the image-rehabbing Antonio Margarito in separate fights. That's assuming somebody will still give Margarito a licence to fight in this country. "There is more than enough of a Hispanic market to support that kind of show," Arum says. Jerry Jones' new stadium defies description. Ostentatious doesn't quite cut it. The only phrase that really captures it is really, really big. In many ways, it is the ultimate statement of how much technology has taken over our lives.
Night out
Everything is so far away that people now pay lots of money to watch on a massive TV screen. A reporter asked two couples, seated 50 yards away, in row 1 of the first raised section, what they paid for their tickets. They said $700 apiece. Just another $2,800 night out with the wives. Who said the economy was bad?
Other sports surround their stars with security muscle. They create an appetite to see their heroes by never letting you.
Up close and personal in other sports is a visit to Oprah. In boxing, you sit down at lunch and they sit down with you.
At lunch on Saturday, a group of writers sat at a table in a hotel courtyard. Suddenly, on a balcony above, Pacquiao emerged, with a half-dozen of his guys, whoever they are, just hanging out, waving to the luncheon crowd. Just hours away from performing in a pressure-packed and dangerous sport before millions worldwide, Pacquiao smiled the big smile of a guy with nothing more on his mind than shooting billiards with his friends. That is probably where he was going.
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