Michael Buffer has yet to hit the ring for the main event but you have me. To inject a dose of reality to this festive occasion. Boxing's popularity has been waning everywhere except for the KSP factor in this country. One of the main appeals for our countrymen is that it gives some much needed attention. It almost does not matter how they get that attention but the fact they get it. Our country has long proved they have no discretion when it comes to politicians but rooting for Manny is supposed to make up for it As for boxing's shrinking world stage they only have themselves to blame. Short term profits (pay per view) over long term erosion in terms of connecting with general sports fans around the world. Now what's left? 95% of the people dying for Pacquiao are the ones dying for attention. Translation they are not general sports fans or even boxing fans. They are in for whatever perceived value of Pacquiao being on the stage. The sports world has since moved on. Las Vegas for all its glitz and tackiness knows the bottom line more than most. I learned that listening to Colin Cowherd. The casinos and hotels keep getting bigger because they know where to place their bets better than the public. Their fiscal evaluation of this fight is not good.
I am hoping for though expecting I won't get a Manny loss. Because I am hoping each and every Manny crazed Filipino will spend about a dozen more brain cells a day realizing they themselves can be champions in their own backyard by selecting and supporting leaders who are more interested in serving the public than themselves. That they spend those brain cells and realize just because someone is successful in one arena it does not automatically translate to public service. Ultimately a Filipino who flies to Vegas and gives a Mexican a concussion twice a year does nothing for their situation.
Ed
http://www.nj.com/sports/ledger/izenbergcol/index.ssf/2008/12/big_fight_now_economysize.html
Big fight now economy-size
by Jerry Izenberg/The Star-Ledger
Thursday December 04, 2008, 9:35 PM
LAS VEGAS -- Seventy years ago, with America struggling to climb free of the Great Depression, 80,000 people packed Yankee Stadium to watch Joe Louis batter Max Schmeling in what on another level was viewed as America vs. Hitler's Germany.
Brutally hard times are today threatening to challenge the pain of the Great Depression we thought would never come again. And here in this city, built on a foundation of neon and fantasy, we are now at the edge of the shadows of what a plethora of boxing publicists are pushing at the world as boxing's armageddon-minus-one.
Absorb the propaganda at your own peril. On the surface we have what figures to be a pretty decent fight here between Oscar De La Hoya and Manny Pacquiao at the MGM Saturday night.
Understand that the specter of World War II has long since been consigned to historians.
Understand that De La Hoya and Pacquiao are not Joe Louis and Max Schmeling.
Understand that the handwriting has been on the wall in huge capital letters for some time now even as this depression was rushing toward us and boxing from its world organizations, the cable companies in general, and HBO in particular, all adopted as their rallying cry background music that "Wishing Will Make It So."
And there is no indication that boxing -- least of all -- can merge the wish and the deed.
Right now, good as this fight could be, Vegas knows that it is not going to be the box office cash cow it was sold as. When the tickets first went on sale, the promoters gleefully announced within a few hours that they had a sellout. The fact that a huge block was bought by scalpers, and another huge block was bought by the local hotels to give away to the visiting high rollers, wasn't even mentioned because that's the way it always is. It was that way when Ali and Duran and Holmes and Sugar Ray and the other headliners of what we now know was a vastly different era came to town.
It was that way before Wall Street and a number of banks made their own rules and when American automakers felt that forever belonged to them no matter, boxing hasn't been in this much trouble in decades.
There is a time-honored adage in places where the smart money gathers in any city that says "Vegas knows."
Bear that in mind. The promoters announced this as the greatest squared circle show on earth. They were seduced by their own words.
Vegas was not.
Management at the MGM, which hosts the fight, found out in a hurry. They found out when their greatest, most loyal weather vane turned them down. The had sent the word out to their A-list high rollers. There are a few guys on that list that can turn the table drop on a single night by a million dollars. The replies were heavily spiced with yawns.
The MGM immediately released a block of the tickets it had bought to the box office and other outlets. Then they went back in the trenches. Nobody knows how many names are on the hotel's B-list but each one received an e-mail with the following offer:
You can have two $1500 ringside seats, two night in a luxury room, admission to the VIP post-fight party and a $100 gambling chip as a bonus.
Nobody in town could remember that drastic a marketing move.
Meanwhile, back at Golden Boy and Top Rank, the heat was on their particular sponsors, and a deal was made for the sponsors -- Coca-Cola, Tecate beer and Full Throttle energy drink -- to offer pay-per-view rebate coupons worth $10 to $20 to reduce the pay-per-view price from $54.95 to $4.95. The move was unprecedented. "We probably should have priced the pay-per-view lower," promoter Bob Arum concedes.
Suddenly, Oscar and Manny damned well better produce the greatest show on the Strip Saturday night. The commercial success of the next mega-fight -- no matter whom it involves -- will depend on the excitement level these two can produce. The evidence, too long ignored, explains the pressure.
They never spoke much about it, but when then-middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik fought the former middleweight title-holder, Bernard Hopkins in Atlantic City in October, they expected about 350,000 pay-per-view home buys. The fight had even more to recommend it than Oscar and Manny. But America's economic slide was already in progress.
What they got was a shocking 190,000 homes.
The horror of the current economy and the dearth of charismatic stars the sport currently has speak volumes about its immediate future. Tomorrow, De La Hoya is the draw. Whether it's ego or economics or both, clearly he thinks so. Asked the other day about what will happen when he retires, and what fighter could command the pay-per-view price being asked Saturday, the fighter/promoter said what he thought:
"That's the million-dollar question. Who will take my place as the next star in boxing? It's a real problem for us as promoters."
Jerry Izenberg appears regularly in the Star-Ledger
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