Little-known fact about Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones: He once was a boxing promoter. In 1984, just five years before he purchased the NFL’s most globally recognizable brand, Jones staged a fight card in Little Rock, Ark., that drew all of 2,500 spectators.
Perhaps it is no surprise then that early blueprints for Jones’ Xanadu of a football palace, Cowboys Stadium, included a layout for boxing that placed the ring on the blue star at the 50-yard line.
Last September, wistful past and opportunistic future converged when Jones traveled to New York to participate in an HBO special about the uncertainty of ownership of sports franchises in a weakening economy. HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg, sitting in the green room with Jones before going out to chat with host Joe Buck, floated an idea: Would Jones be interested in hosting a megafight between Filipino sensation Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. in Cowboys Stadium?
There were roadblocks — Pacquiao had to get past his Nov. 14 title bout with formidable WBO welterweight champion Miguel Cotto, for one thing — but Jones, 67, snapped at the notion like a frenzied shark in chum-filled waters.
He had a spanking-new $1.3 billion cathedral to athletic opulence that needed to pay for itself, and even with a couple of preseason games and homefield advantage in the playoffs up to the Super Bowl, the most dates he could fill with pro football was 12.
That left a bunch of openings on the schedule for college football, the NBA All-Star game (which drew a record 108,713 spectators), concerts, tractor pulls, political conventions and whatever other attractions he could bring in to separate the public from its diminishing cache of disposable cash. Oh, yeah, and Super Bowl XLV will be held in Jones’ sumptuous Arlington playpen on Feb. 6, 2011.
Pacquiao did his part, stopping Cotto in 12 rounds, and the scrum was on to determine which venue would land what figured to be the highest-grossing pay-per-view boxing event ever, surpassing the 2.15 million buys and $120 million total for the May 5, 2007, matchup of Mayweather and Oscar De La Hoya.
The Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans expressed an interest, as did the usual suspects — New York’s Madison Square Garden, Los Angeles’ Staples Center and Las Vegas’ MGM Grand — which in recent years had taken turns hosting the biggest fights. But none of the contenders came close to matching Jones’ offer of a $25 million site fee, which would have easily shattered the previous high of $18 million for Mayweather-De La Hoya.
“This is a very logical way to introduce our stadium to the world and lift its aura,” Jones said. “We write checks like that around here all the time.”
It all broke down because of haggling over drug testing between the two camps and some rather large egos involved with the promoters. So much for Pacquiao vs. Mayweather.
With Pacquiao back in play and looking for an opponent and a venue, Arum and Jones got back together like old flames with unfulfilled ardor. Result: Pacquiao (50-3-2, 38 KOs) will defend the WBO 147-pound title he took from Cotto against Ghana’s Joshua Clottey (35-3, 20 KOs) on Saturday night in Cowboys Stadium. An on-site audience of 40,000 or so is expected, with HBO PPV to televise at a suggested retail price of $39.95.
And if “Pac-Man” bombs out the capable but limited Clottey as many expect, so what? The two stars of this production are not Pacquiao and Clottey; they’re Pacquiao and Cowboys Stadium.
“I have never, ever seen anything like it,” Arum gushed after a tour of Cowboys Stadium. “It just blows you away.”
That mind-boggling $25 million site fee was, of course, pulled from the table and replaced with a more cost-efficient $7 million one. Clottey, after all, is no Mayweather. But there will be other big-fight nights, and Jones — an egomaniacal showman who might be described as an amalgamation of P.T. Barnum, Donald Trump, George Steinbrenner and Joan Rivers (for number of face lifts undergone) — has made it clear he will be bidding for his share of them. Pacquiao-Clottey is only the start.
“We want big fights here,” Jones said. “This is the first step to doing that. I’m excited we could get a fight like this here because I know what boxing can mean to our stadium.”
