The venue for the super fight between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather is still up in the air following the latest developments. Although some will tell you that Las Vegas was the only option from the get go, other venues were and are lining up to try to land the biggest fight in history.
Although the Dallas venue would have offered more money for all parties, for some reason Shaefer canceled the trip himself and Arum were taking to discuss the terms with the Cowboy owner Jerry Jones.
The reason given was that he didn’t want the fight to happen in an open air venue. Of course this is rather vague reasoning seen as the stadium has a roof, not to mention the other front runner as a venue is a Vegas outdoor temporary stadium. Apparently Golden Body are now insisting on using the MGM Grand for some reason. While this is hardly a bad venue, it makes you wonder why they would choose this over higher paying venues with bigger crowd capacities.
To me this all sounds like the two promoters working in cahoots to start some kind of bidding war between the various venues, or perhaps just to pressure Vegas into coughing up a few more dollars to secure the fight. Given the history surrounding Vegas and boxing, it was certainly the venue everyone was expecting before the fight was made, and if you ask the average fan they will tell you Vegas is where all the biggest fights go down.
Perhaps more worryingly Golden Boy apparently handed Arum an amended contract including stipulations about the venue. It would be a massive blow for boxing if the fight of the decade was held up by something as trivial as the venue. Another angle being reported by BoxingScene is that Mayweather was apparently unhappy with Texas as a venue because he thinks the officials will be biased in some way. Where this idea came from exactly I’m not sure, but to think that Texan officials would favor a Filipino over an American seems a little odd.
Obviously there are those within Vegas to ties with both Top Rank and Golden Boy, although whether this is enough to make up the difference that the Cowboys stadium would have offered in extra money is debatable. The MGM currently has a capacity of 17157, which pales compared to the 80000 (expandable to 111000) that the Cowboys Stadium can offer. Surely even given whatever under the table deals are being made between Vegas and the promoters at Golden Boy, the move seems strange.
The biggest losers if this happens at a tiny venue though are the fans who otherwise would have been able to see the fight live. Given the extra attention and furore the Cowboys venue would have created, a lot of casual and new fans to boxing would no doubt have been attracted, which only pumps more money into the sport in the long term. Limiting the spectators to a either people who can afford to spend a small fortune or those with ties to boxing already is a big turn off to the fans and only serves to promote the idea that Boxing is a closed shop inaccessible to regular fans.
