Craziest atmosphere for a fight

Benn-McClellan and a ton of other fights in Britain. The ability to turn a boxing match into a football match atmosphere is one of the great strengths of British home crowd support.

 

Tony Sibson v Mark Kaylor.
10,500 at a sold out Wembley Arena. Very scary at times. So tribal.
I was a pretty worried teenager !

 

Chacon-Limon IV immediately comes to mind. Rabid from beginning to end. To say the arena became unglued when Chacon dropped Limon in the final round is an understatement.

Another great one is Holyfield-Tyson I. The crowd really added to the 'big fight' aura. The knockdown, the final seconds of the 10th round and the stoppage resulted in deafening moments of pandemonium.

 

The night Danny Lopez knocked out Chucho Castillo at the Olympic Auditorium had put the crowd on edge and they were getting surly. The Mexican crowd would cheer for Lopez against most opponents, but when he would fight a Mexican National they threw their support with their countryman. The following fight was another Mexican-American in Frankie Duarte against Mexican National Famosito Gomez. Well, Duarte won a very close decision and things started getting rough. Someone threw a bottle at Frankie and he responded with the old "Up Yours!" gesture and that set off a full scale riot where the crowd were igniting the cushions in the seats. Man, good times!

 

Marvin Hagler vs. Alan Minter was quite eye-catching as the crowd threw beer cans and bottles into the ring.
Other examples of open hostilities or tense atmosphere: Johnson vs Jeffries, Louis vs. Schmeling II

 

El Paso Texas 1998 at the Sun Bowl in front of 45k fans and another 7k tailgating ODLH beat Frenchman Patrick Charpentier.

 

Good shout on Hagler-Minter @The Fighting Yoda.

In a completely different way, Douglas-Tyson in Tokyo was surreal as the Japanese fans basically sat in respectful silence as the greatest upset in perhaps the history of all sports played out in front of their eyes.

Also Chavez vs. Greg Haugen, as 134,000 Tijuana taxicab drivers took a day off work to come see JC Superstar punish the man who made fun of them. Julio to this day probably gets a free ride in Tijuana anywhere and anytime he needs.

 

Anyone fortunate enough that went to fights at the Blue Horizon had that great atmosphere. Untouched. No way building codes would ever let that kind of construction be utilized again.

I can remember being so careful walking down those steps. But that angle put you right on top of the action. And you had a bunch of tough hombres fighting on those cards.

 

Johnson vs Jeffries

 

Ricky Hatton was able to bring that support to America. Las Vegas had never seen anything like it.

 

Sanchez-Gomez with the mariachi and salsa bands...

 

Hopkins vs Trinidad