Around the time the Tropicana and the Dunes were headlining ?Jayne Mansfield and a few sequins?? boxing in Nevada has been all Las Vegas?
?Las Vegas. The City of Lights. Everything is beautiful.??Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Fifty-six years ago today, Edward Brophy died while watching a prizefight on television.
The name probably doesn?t mean anything to you (no, not the executive director of the International Boxing Hall of Fame), though the face might. He usually played, and for comic effect, small-time hoods or bumbling detectives. You can see him, for instance, as hoodlum Joe Morelli in The Thin Man.
Who was in the ring when Brophy?s tick-tock gave up its ticking and tocking? Was it Johnny Page knocking out Jimmy Ferguson in the third? Tony Maya outpointing Otto Hardison in a four-rounder? Or Lino Rendon outpointing Willie Bell over six?
With any luck, he made it to see Benny ?Kid? Paret relieve the enigmatic Don ?Geronimo? Jordan of the Welterweight Championship of the World, winning the bout by unanimous decision.
A bout of some historical significance, as it was the first title match to be televised from Las Vegas, at the Convention Center. (The first title bout to take place in Vegas, staged by Doc Kearns and reffed and judged by James J. Braddock, was between Archie Moore and Nino Valdes at Cashman Field on May 2, 1955, Moore winning the ?World Heavyweight Championship of Nevada? on points.)
Boxing had been legal in Nevada since 1897, and several significant fights took place there, including the historic heavyweight title match between champ Jack Johnson and former champ James J. Jeffries. The bout took place in Reno on July 4, 1910, Johnson winning by 15th-round TKO in a match scheduled for 45. A more colorful time, President Taft declined Tex Rickard?s offer to referee, so the legendary promoter did it himself. But, as boxing historian Lee Groves writes, ?Las Vegas didn?t really enter the fray? until the Jordan-Paret bout.
During boxing?s Golden Age, from the 1930s to the 1950s, almost all the big fights took place in New York City, more often than not at Madison Square Garden. But following Jordan-Paret, ?the Convention Center in Vegas became a semi-regular venue for title fights,? writes Groves, ?including the rematch between Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson and the fourth meeting between Gene Fullmer and Sugar Ray Robinson.? The relationship between the Sweet Science and Sin City was ?fruitful.?
What exactly generated this symbiosis? It came down to promoters getting a better deal in Vegas than in New York. ?Instead of paying rent to secure arenas like Madison Square Garden, the casinos gave promoters site fees for the privilege of hosting the event,? Groves writes. ?This new business model proved lucrative for all sides and from the 1970s through the end of the 20th century Las Vegas (then Atlantic City) drew the lion?s share of boxing?s biggest events.?
James Roman, author of Chronicles of Old Las Vegas: Exposing Sin City?s High-Stakes History, agrees. ?Las Vegas elevated boxing into a spectacle,? he writes. ?More than a contest, a fight became an event. While hosting some of the most memorable title fights in history, a well-polished industry of lights, limos, promoters and media ratcheted up the excitement. It continues today: prizefighters battle for multi-million-dollar purses, tickets sell for jaw-dropping figures, and ever-greater fortunes are wagered in the sports betting rooms. Title fights in Las Vegas even make national news.?
Boxing in the Silver State has certainly lived up to its promise since Governor Reinhold Sadler made the sport legal on January 29, 1897 (when prizefighting was illegal everywhere else in the country), thus paving the way for the heavyweight championship bout between James J. Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons at The Race Track Arena in Carson City that March 17, Fitzsimmons winning the title by 14th-round KO. But since 1960 ? around the time the Tropicana and the Dunes were headlining ?Jayne Mansfield and a few sequins?? boxing in Nevada has been all Las Vegas, ?the country?s primary boxing venue,? writes Lee Cleveland, managing editor of FightSaga.com. ?From its glitzy hotels to the bright lights and neon signs of The Strip to the buzz inside the casinos and the excitement in the air in the arenas. It?s electrifying.?
Maybe, though Groves writes, ?Las Vegas? role in boxing has been dramatically reduced, at least when compared to the glory days,? though he concludes that the town ?still has a foothold in boxing?s firmament.?
Not so the Convention Center. It still exists, but hasn?t hosted a title fight, or any boxing match, since March 9, 1984, when Tim Witherspoon beat Greg Page by majority decision for the vacant WBC World heavyweight title and Carlos De Leon beat Anthony Davis by unanimous decision, thus retaining his WBC World cruiserweight title.
As for Edward Brophy, he?s in Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica. Not much there in the way of bright lights or neon signs. But that?s as it should be.
