Vegas gets ready to rumble again
THE taxi driver for last Monday’s short journey from McCarran Airport to the Las Vegas Strip was a Filipino and therefore a Manny Pacquiao fan and, needless to say, he was backing a Pacman victory.
Manny, he said, was already in town and hitting the track on the UNLV campus for his daily run at 5am but apart from that and in spite of the massive hoardings promoting tonight’s light-welterweight showdown with Britain’s Ricky Hatton, there was not much of a buzz surrounding Sin City’s first mega-fight of the year.
Like Pacquiao, it seems, it was all a little early for the hullaballoo of a big fight week. The promotional billing for tonight’s fistic entertainment, ostensibly being contested for Hatton’s IBO and Ring Magazine titles, is “The Battle of East and West” while fight posters also carry the catchline “From The Ends of The Earth to the Centre of the Ring”.
At the MGM Grand hotel on Monday they were still building that ring inside the 14,000-seat Grand Garden Arena, a venue which last saw a fight in December when Pacquiao scored his momentous victory over a spent Oscar De La Hoya at welterweight, way above his natural comfort zone.
A lot has happened since then, not least an escalation of the economic meltdown. De La Hoya has recognised his time was up inside the ring and after a glittering career he bowed to the inevitable and called it quits to concentrate full time on his role as president of Golden Boy Promotions.
Tonight, in conjunction with his old boss at Top Rank, Bob Arum, Golden Boy will co-promote what promises to be an explosive fight that has, remarkably for a contest between two non-Americans, captured the imagination of sports fans and the media in the United States.
De La Hoya was not called the “Golden Boy” for nothing. He was record-breaking, pay-per-view television gold, a record 32 of his 45 fights being shown on the Home Box Office (HBO) premium cable network, 19 of those on HBO PPV, generating 14.1 million buys and bringing in $696m (€780m) in revenue, all of which facts are records.
In a boxing landscape that does not currently feature a prominent American heavyweight or any US fighter of De La Hoya’s stature, the likeable and humble Pacquiao could well pick up the slack with another dynamic performance against Hatton.
Hatton is a sporting hero in Britain, his cheeky chappy schtick and beer-drinking, dart-throwing man of the people appeal winning over a public largely denied the pleasure of live boxing on their terrestrial television screens. When, in December 2007 he left Manchester for Las Vegas to take on pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather Jr, numbers in excess of 20,000 followed him across the pond for his ill-fated date at welterweight and more people in Britain purchased the fight on PPV than in America – 1.2 million buys through Sky compared to HBO’s 915,000.
In the Phillipines, Pacquiao is held in even greater esteem, transcending his sport to become a national icon, his every move followed with pride.
His story is often framed as a ‘pauper to the presidency’, such is his political clout that the country’s highest office is considered to be waiting for him whenever he chooses to plonk his 5ft 6ins body behind the desk.
Pacquiao left home in General Santos City as a child for the capital city Manila to raise money for his single mother, spending some of his formative years living in a cardboard shack. He now lives like a king in General Santos and is revered as one.
He is, by all accounts, a benevolent king, the Vegas cabbie happily repeating the oft-heard story that a proportion of Pacquiao’s pay days always goes to those back home less fortunate than himself.
Evidence of that popularity was all too clear when the real pre-fight hype got under way on Tuesday, as the two fighters made their official Grand Arrivals in Vegas.
The words “pandemonium” and swanky Las Vegas hotels don’t go together very often, at least when Mike Tyson is not involved but that really was the case when Pacquiao arrived at his customary fight-week headquarters at the Mandalay Bay hotel.
GRAND ARRIVALS, as the promoters call them are a staple of Vegas fight weeks, but seasoned observers said they had never seen anything like the scenes that greeted the Filipino hero when he stepped off his especially liveried Pacquiao bus.
The pound-for-pound king was mobbed by media and fans alike as, with his mother accompanying him for the first time in his career, his entourage had to shuffle single file into the hotel lobby for what was supposed to be a series of media interviews there.
That plan was quickly jettisoned when it became clear order could not be maintained by the hotel’s small detail of security men and the Pacquiao people train promptly shuffled off into the casino and into an elevator that took him to the safety of his suite.
The Pacman’s long-time handler and three-time trainer of the year Freddie Roach was among those left trailing in the wake of the near hysterical mob and happily posed for pictures with, amongst others, the Philippines junior national basketball team.
Talking to reporters for the umpteenth time in this big fight build-up, Roach said his fighter was in the best shape he’s ever been heading into this fight at 140 pounds.
A happy Manny, apparently, is a Manny who can eat what he likes. And when he can’t – that is, for most of his professional career at 130 pounds or lower, he is as miserable as sin.
“This is the best he’s looked,” the trainer said. “There’s one thing about Manny Pacquiao, the weight issue. Making weight (at 130) was always a struggle. When Manny can’t eat he’s a miserable person. He’s nasty, he’s not nice to be around. Right now, he eats whatever he wants, he will not miss a meal. He’ll have breakfast before the weigh in and he’ll weigh in at 140 pounds and he’ll be happy. And when Manny’s happy, that’s when he’ll be at his best.”
Roach has not been the only one talking ad infinitum since this match was made official at the end of January but there were still three more days of newspaper column inches to fill and PPV buys to sell when the final pre-fight press conference got under way Wednesday.
This was a typical big-fight Vegas affair. The speeches, the trash talk, the hype and the money were all on display. Veteran promoter Bob Arum bigged up his man Pacquiao, comparing his rags to riches tale and current philanthropy to his contemporaries and their gaudy displays of bling.
Yes, Bob Arum actually said “bling” and there were no prizes for guessing Arum had Floyd “Money” Mayweather Jr in mind with his estranged father Floyd Sr sitting a few feet away on the dais as well as a Golden Boy Promotions entourage led by De La Hoya and that also included Bernard Hopkins and Shane Mosley.
Floyd Sr launched his routine attack on rival trainer Freddie “the joke coach” Roach, this time calling him “cockroach” before embarking on a trademark rhyme that included the priceless couplet “Hey Pac, it’s over, stop wishing on a four-leaf clover”.
All the fun of the fair and a great spectacle but a press conference? Not a chance. We must hope Hatton versus Pacquiao tonight does exactly what it says on the tin and delivers some substance to match another typical week of Las Vegas hype.
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