Just a little over 300 seats at press row will be approved for deadline writers for the May 2 super fight between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather.
The MGM Grand Garden Arena, which can accommodate 16,200, is expected to be filled to the brim and Hall of Fame promoter Bob Arum said yesterday that ?every newspaper in the country (US) will be sending reporters to cover the fight.?
Aside from the American media, which will be made up not only of print reporters but TV crew and Internet writers, ?the whole world will also be sending media representatives.?
The fight is so huge that writers from other beats assigned to cover it have begun sending out their applications.
Magna Media is handling the screening of credentials and it has sent notice to those who have sent their applications that slots are extremely limited owing to the magnitude of the event.
Arum said those who won?t make the grade to cover it live at press row will get the opportunity to watch the fight live at the media center.
?We?ll be putting up a large screen at the media center,? said Arum, whose Top Rank Inc. is working closely with lead promoter Mayweather Promotions in staging the unification welterweight match.
?We?ll do the best we can (to accommodate),? added the 83-year-old Arum.
The Philippines alone is dispatching at least three TV crews and newspapers and their online sections have drawn out the gameplan for the coverage.
HEARTBREAK HOTEL
For the last 10 years, diehard followers of Manny Pacquiao, members of his entourage and even the Filipino boxing media, have made the Vagabond Inn on Vine Street, just a stone?s throw away from the Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood, their home during the runup to the Filipino?s fights.
That won?t be the case as Pacquiao is getting ready to face Floyd Mayweather on May 2 in Las Vegas as the Vagabond Inn, the favorite hangout of pimps and prostitutes and drug dealers, has been torn down to give way to a nicer and classier hotel.
Last time the Bulletin checked, construction was still in its infancy and the replacement won?t be up probably until next year.
It was also at the Vagabond Inn where Pacquiao stayed while training for a big fight from 2001 until 2004 before renting a place at the trendy Sunset+Vine down the road and The Palazzo.
With the Vagabond Inn a thing of the past, those affiliated with Pacquiao have been brought to the nondescript Park Plaza Lodge on 3rd Street, just several hundred meters from the Pan Pacific Park where the boxer does his morning roadwork thrice a week.
SOLAR ALL-ACCESS
Solar Entertainment Corporation has reached a deal with various media outlets to air the much-anticipated bout of Pacquiao against Mayweather.
The company which owns the rights of all Pacquiao?s fights said that it was the ring icon himself who wanted to unify the country?s leading broadcast networks ? ABS-CBN, GMA and TV5 ? owing to his showdown with Mayweather as one of the sport?s biggest in years.
Solar will also air the fight live and commercial free through its pay-per-view service Solar All-Access.
