By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com
Long before the Vegas Golden Knights showed up and the Oakland Raiders decided to move to Las Vegas, the town served as the world’s boxing capital from the 1970s through the 1990s, hosting everything from monster bouts like Sugar Ray Leonard-Marvin Hagler at Caesar Palace to smaller, bread-and-butter bouts.
Las Vegas and boxing have a rich history. But as Las Vegas’ sports market evolves into a town hosting major league sports teams and other pro teams, the tenor of the major boxing matches has changed with the times.
Case in point: Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s majority decision over rival Gennady “GGG” Golovkin at T-Mobile Arena to claim the world middleweight championship Saturday night. Attendance was 21,965 — slightly less than the crowd size for the first fight at T-Mobile Arena between the two middleweights a year ago.
The bouts have morphed into uber sports events. There was the so-called fight of the century of Floyd Mayweather, J. vs. Manny Pacquiao on May 2, 2015 (which was panned for being a snoozer but still the biggest gate revenue generator for a boxing match in Nevada history); the Mayweather-Conor McGregor crossover boxing match/circus act on Aug. 26, 2017 ( Mayweather toyed with the MMA fighter abd the “match” generated the second biggest gate revenue in state history) and now a possible Mayweather-Pacquiao 2, announced by “Money” Mayweather on the eve of the Canelo-GGG slugfest.
Even the Alvarez-Golovkin rematch has morphed into a monster event, attracting tourists from Australia to Mexico who traveled to Las Vegas for this uber boxing event at T-Mobile Arena.
A Triple G fan from Mexico.
And the celebrities piled in, too: Charles Barkley, Dave Chappelle, George Lopez, LeBron James, Mike Tyson, Rosie Perez and Will Smith, who also enjoy big UFC fights, too.
LVSportsBiz.com chatted with noted longtime boxing writer Kevin Iole, who writes for Yahoo Sports, about the role of boxing in Las Vegas’ evolving sports market. Iole talked about the advent of the “uber” boxing event, such as Saturday’s Canelo-GGG bout.
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The crowd was a sellout earlier in the week. This belt is now Canelo’s.
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