Tarver vs. Dawson II

I refuse to believe that only 300 tickets were sold to a title fight in Vegas.

 

It's sad when you think about a limited bum like Margo can fill a 20,000 seat arena but a true P4P talent like Dawson who's lightyears beyond Margo can't sell tickets, something is wrong with that.:-( This is one of the many reasons why boxing is dying in the US. We don't support really talented fighters only bums who are punching bags for the elites.:deal IMO Dawson should be fighting in his hometown atleast there he could draw.

 

Im damn sure gonna be watching
And Dawson is gonna get in dat ass yet again

 

I've seen 300 and 700, but bottom line is it was under 1,000.

To be clear, I am not at all excited about this match because Dawson has nothing to gain and everything to lose. That said, hopefully he will view his HBO debut as an opportunity to make a big impression.

 

Of course it was a nowhere else to go scenario. Having dumped his belt, who else could Dawson have credibly fought other than Tarver?

 

He dumped the belt in order to fight Tarver.

It was a calculated gamble. Tarver was the guy he wanted and Showtime wanted for him, and it worked out. Had he dropped the belt and fought a can on ESPN2, then you and I would be agreeing that he blew it.

 

STEVE KIM ARTICLE .


When Antonio Margarito and Shane Mosley duke it out for the WBA welterweight title this Saturday night at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, a sell-out crowd of 18,157 is not only anticipated, it's expected. On Friday afternoon, a press release was sent out by Top Rank, which is co-promoting this event alongside Golden Boy Promotions, announcing that just 600 more seats (all in the upper tier of the arena) were available. As of late Tuesday afternoon, Lee Samuels of Top Rank said that about half of those were gobbled up.

There won’t be much of a walk-up crowd - because none will be needed.

18,157 tickets sold, in a major metropolitan city in a big league arena. To put this into perspective, that's basically what the Lakers - always the hottest ticket in LA - draw. (Or to put it another way, that's about three Clipper games). As you peruse the internet ticket brokers, you see that these ducats are going for well above face value at all price ranges. Right now, a prime ringside seat will cost you over a grand. Top Rank says that they are plum out of tickets. Even if Kobe Bryant decided to take in the fight, they wouldn't have one for him. Although Samuels joked, "Well, for him we'll definitely set up a chair in one of the sections. Maybe near the aisle."

The bullish ticket sales are almost as big a story as the anticipated fight itself. In an era when true marquee attractions in this industry are few and far between, and most of the big promotions take place in casino settings, this has been a revelation. In many ways, it's stunning. Mosley, for all his accomplishments, has never been a big draw, and up until last summer, Margarito wasn't even an A-lister in the sport. Bob Arum admits that when this fight was first announced for the Staples Center, that, "We had hoped to do about 8,000 - 9,000."

When asked about the brisk business at the box-office, Arum would say, "I don't know about surprised, but I'm very gratified. It shows that when you price your tickets right you can attract a great crowd. We're going to have tremendous celebrities at ringside; it became the thing to do in LA."

There was a time when this region was a huge boxing city. It regularly had events at historic venues like the Grand Olympic Auditorium, the Fabulous Forum, Dodger Stadium, the LA Sports Arena and the Coliseum that drew sizable crowds. Like many other cities, as the big fights moved to the desert, this market dried up. But in recent years, with the commitment made to the sport by AEG (which owns the Home Depot Center and Staples Center), Los Angeles has had a bit of a revival. In a region this big, with this much of a Latin presence, boxing will always have some prominence.

The price points for this bout were set at $300, $150, $75, $50 and $25. The hope was to fill up the lower bowl of the arena, which is approximately 12,000 in capacity. But from the pre-sale, it was clear this fight was going to open up the rafters.
"When we started getting the sales reports early on, it was a tremendous rush from the Lakers, the Clippers, and Kings customers," Arum says of the three major Staples Center residents. "The building was selling a tremendous number of tickets. And then when we started getting calls from all these celebrities who were coming to the fight, who wanted tickets to the fight, we knew we had something special. Because remember when the first place we had gone was the MGM Grand and they did not feel that they could get a big crowd for the event in Las Vegas. It's the best thing that ever happened to us that we ended up at Staples."

There was a bit of serendipity to how this fight ended up in Southern California. Because the weekend of January 24th falls in between the NFL Championship Games and the Super Bowl, the MGM Grand believed that it would be difficult to attract their big customers for three consecutive weekends, especially in light of the current economic situation. And with discretionary income shrinking all over, there was a concerted effort to price these tickets as affordably as possible.

This may seem like a great job of promoting, but in all honesty, no real promoting was actually done for this event. In fact, not a single penny was spent on marketing by the two promoters. They didn't need to. The fight itself drove this promotion. And it used a necessary formula for this particular area: a highly popular Mexican fighter against another established star. Which is precisely what Margarito is in the wake of his big victory over Miguel Cotto in July and Shane Mosley - who for all his struggles to develop his own fanbase - is a recognizable and familiar foe from nearby.

Margarito-Mosley kicks off an encouraging trend for 2009 that sees fights taking place in the hometowns and regions of the boxers that are headlining the marquee. Kelly Pavlik will play to a sold-out Chevrolet Center in Youngstown, Ohio on February 21st, while Miguel Cotto is expected to draw around 10,000 in his familiar haunts at the Madison Square Garden in New York. A week later in Houston, a full house is expected at the Toyota Center when local favorite Juan Diaz takes on Juan Manuel Marquez in an event promoted by Golden Boy. Outside of the proposed - but still not yet finalized - showdown between Manny Pacquiao and Ricky Hatton on May 2nd, most of the major bouts occurring this year are taking place in non-casino venues.

Boxing is once again being brought back to the masses.

"This is the year when boxing realized what all sports know," explained Arum, "that if you have a Philadelphia Eagles-Arizona Cardinals game, you'll sell-out in the stadium in Arizona. But if you put that same game in the Meadowlands you couldn't get 25-percent of your seats filled. So it is what it is. You put the event where the fighters are popular. In other words, if I took the Cotto fight and put it at the Staples and put the Margarito-Mosley fight in the Garden, I would be singing the blues because it's the wrong place for the fight. Nothing really to do with the casinos. The reason you did fights in casinos is because the casinos were attracting so many customers and they needed things to do that. You were able to ride that pony.
“But today, when the casino business is hurting, there aren't many fights which will draw people to Las Vegas or to Atlantic City just to see the fight. Yeah, if you have Hatton-Pacquiao or De La Hoya-Pacquiao, but not for an ordinarily good fight. So you put the fight in a place where there's going to be some connection and it's going to draw. Most of these so-called promoters don't know what the f**k they're doing and they go for the easy buck and they take these events and they put it in a casino so they don't have to work.


“For example, the Chad Dawson- Antonio Tarver fight, when it was at The Palms Casino, it sold 300 tickets. And guess where they're going back? Why? Maybe they think they have 300 satisfied customers."

The atmosphere and ambience at a casino fight is about as stale as three week old bread. The arena remains empty and devoid of any energy and the fans (many of whom are just casino comps) don't show up until a few minutes before the main event. You see morgues with more life in them.

It's just more fun to cover and view fights in free standing arenas with real diehards. They come early, they drink plenty of beer, and they raise hell all night. Arum says it's more fun to promote these types of events.

“To be in these arenas, particularly to be in a place like Youngstown, you meet new people, you get different views from these people, you get to really see what they’re talking about. Not only about sports but about life. You get a different perspective on things. I've always done it throughout my career around the world, like Italy and France. It was a great experience. But it's equally a great experience to do fights in these places in the United States. I remember the fights we did in Bismarck, North Dakota with Virgil Hill and the Texas fights we did in Lubbock with Robin Blake. So we've done that. These are the fights that I remember, much more than I do these fights, the cookie-cutter fights that you put in casinos."

the article is longer but i have had to edit to fit it in.

 

That's ridiculous. 300 tickets, unbelievable

 

Talk is cheap. He knows Calzaghe is almost certain to retire. I guarentee he'd turn down the fight if offered.

 

That's what I said. Once he had dumped the belt he had nowhere else to go, so had to agree to the ridiculous 'rematch no matter what' clause if he won. If the fight against Tarver had been a unification fight then Dawson would have been negotiating from a position of strength and Tarver would have been the one with nowhere else to really go if he wanted to earn some money, so there would have been no need to agree such a clause.

 

300 tickets? That is...pathetic. atsch

Just like this rematch actually. Thanks for posting the article sean, unclepaulie had reason for doubt as those numbers are so low they are almost unbelievable.

 

Yeah, I can't believe that was true. I won't doubt you from now on bro.

 

Dawson had no choice; he was going to get stripped if he fought Tarver. There couldn't have been a unification.

Did you read the rest of my first post, btw?

Ultimately, Dawson is making a fair mint from the two Tarver fights. From a strictly monetary perspective, he's getting a rematch against a guy in a very, very winnable fight.

 

Making easy money is what we criticize fighters like Calzaghe for. Surely the same must apply to Dawson?

It's good as he is getting on HBO, but it is very bad from a fans' perspective that this passes as anything resembling a 'big fight'.

Let us hope his next fight is bigger and better.

 

Why would anyone be afraid to fight Calzaghe? He's a big payday and doesn't punch hard at all.