Word out of the Cowboys headquarters at the team’s practice facility in suburban Frisco is that competitive professional boxing finally may be coming to the Dallas area. Looks like Cowboys bosses Jerry and Stephen Jones are getting serious about the art of boxing.
They’ve succeeded in landing what should be a competitive fight for their relatively cozy Ford Center at The Star. No big names but finally come Feb. 2, on the eve of the Super Bowl, a pairing of quality fighters where the outcome is in doubt.
It’s undefeated light heavyweight champ Eleider Alvarez taking on Sergey Kovalev.
The boxers met earlier this year with Alvarez, from Colombia, earning a seventh-round knockout to improve to 24-0 while Kovalev, a Russian who was well ahead on all three scorecards when the fight abruptly ended, dropped to 32-3-1.
If it?s not a big-name mega-fight, it?s at least a B-plus level fight coming in the wake of a series of C-level and below matchups and fights in Dallas-Fort Worth.
This is not to say that boxing has not had a renaissance of sorts in North Texas but the big fights of late hardly have been competitive. They all ended as expected.
Still, they?ve drawn crowds.
Manny Pacquiao averaged a smidge under 40,000 paying customers for his two walkovers under the big top at giant AT&T Stadium back in 2010. Canelo Alvarez drew 51,000 for his knockout of lightly-regarded Liam Smith in 2016.
And then there was local undefeated welterweight champ Errol Spence Jr.?s devastating first-round knockout of Carlos Ocampo before a sellout crowd of 12,604 at the The Star. Ocampo, out of Mexico, had been undefeated as well. But not all undefeated fighters are equal, He was overmatched from the opening bell.
Spence is scheduled to fight again March 16 against undefeated Mikey Garcia in a title bout at AT&T. It will be a good test for Spence’s drawing power, He’s from DeSoto, not far from Arlington’s AT&T.
Both Spence and Garcia, who is from California, are rising stars in their game,
One problem: Spence is a natural 147 pounder. Garcia started out at 126 pounds, moved up to lightweight (135 pounds) dabbled at super lightweight aka junior welterweight (140 pounds) and is making his debut in the 147-pound weight class against a fighter who may be the best in the world at that weight. Keep in mind, in boxing, size matters.
