Gary Gittelsohn, the manager of WBC junior flyweight titlist Brian Viloria, got a bit of a surprise when he called Top Rank’s offices and requested tickets for Filipino dignitaries that would be coming in to Las Vegas to see Viloria make the second defense of his championship this Thursday night against Omar Nino Romero at the Orleans Hotel and Casino (OLN 9 pm ET).
“I couldn’t believe it, there were no tickets and it put me for the first time in a very, very big fix,” said Gittelsohn, who finds himself in a wonderful dilemma. “It was one of those delightful problems because it means that Brian has finally stepped into a new dimension and he’s found a home where fans are going to pay to see him.
“My understanding is that it’s about sold out.”
“There isn’t a ticket available on the floor of the Orleans,” confirmed Top Rank’s head honcho, Bob Arum. “Every one has been bought by the casino because there’s such a tremendous number of Hawaiians coming into see him fight.”
And the Hawaiians aren’t flying in from the islands; most of them have already migrated to the desert in the past decade.
In late October of 2005, Lawrence Downes of the New York Times wrote an article – ‘Hawaiians Find an Unlikely Eden in Las Vegas’ – that detailed the mass exodus of Hawaiians that are moving west to Las Vegas in search of better jobs, economic stability and more affordable housing. The article also points out that Hawaiians make about 300,000 trips to Vegas every year.
Downes’ piece points out: “Las Vegas has long been Hawaiians’ No. 1 travel destination, a vacation Mecca’s vacation Mecca, thanks to casino-sponsored charter packages that make crossing the Pacific cheaper than hopping to a neighbor island, and a well-known Hawaiian passion for gambling.”
Later he would write, “Las Vegas is so Hawaiian that island high schools have their reunions here– 40 this year at the California Hotel and Casino alone. This 800-room hotel, known to Hawaiians as ‘the Cal’ is one of a handful of hotels north of the Strip that cater almost exclusively to Hawaiians.”
Gittelsohn says, “There’s a huge population there, and combine that with the fact that the Filipinos have become exceptional boxing fans and have really thrown their support behind Brian in the wake of Manny Pacquiao’s popularity, it’s a wonderful situation.”
It’s the perfect storm of promotability – nationalities and cultures coming together to support a fighter representing both the Philippines and Hawaii.
Now, all Viloria has to do is perform.
“It’s pushed me a lot more, it gives me a little more pressure also because everybody wants to see you fight, everyone comes out wanting to see a guy getting knocked out. They expect that from you,” said Viloria on the prospect of fighting in front of a full house.”
So it works both ways – it can lift me up and make me want to train harder because I know everyone’s coming out there to watch me fight, and at the same time, it puts a lot of pressure on me.
“But I try to take all this pressure and turn it into something I can use.”
‘The Hawaiian Punch’ won his title by stopping Eric Ortiz in September in a non-televised outing, and he then defended his crown in February on a small pay-per-view show headlined by Antonio Margarito. This show on OLN could be the biggest outlet he’s been showcased on in his five year career.
“Every fight for me is an outlet,” he tells Maxboxing. “I have to look good, I have to go into the ring and look devastating. So every fight is important for me, from now until I finish with my boxing career.”
He found out in February that the old adage about defending titles being much more difficult than winning them to be true, as he had a tougher-than-expected time with the cagey veteran, Jose Antonio Aguirre.
“Everybody is coming after you with everything they got and they train 200-percent extra hard for you because they know they can take the title away from you and try to gain some exposure off of you. So I think that’s 100-percent true,” he says. Coming into that bout, Aguirre had been stopped in his previous fight, but halfway through, he was fighting on even terms with the young titlist. “I knew he came in shape and my hand was bothering me at the same time,” he says. “I thought I gained a lot more experience off of that fight. So after half the rounds went by, I knew it was going to be a tough night.”
Buoyed by his youth and power, Viloria would pull away in the late rounds to retain his belt. After winning his title with a quick blowout versus Ortiz in one round, he now has exactly 13 rounds of championship experience.
“I think with the Aguirre fight, I matured a few years,” said Viloria, whose mark stands at 19-0. “It’ll show after this fight how much more experience I have as a professional fighter and what I garnered in my last fight. Hopefully in this fight I can use all of what I took and learned in my last couple of fights and use it against Omar.”
Before, Viloria said that he hadn’t fully grasped that he was a world champion. He does now.
“I experienced how everyone just wants to come at you, all the exposure’s on you after winning a world title,” says the 2000 United States Olympian. “I know a lot of guys just want to get famous off me so it kinda sunk into me after the Aguirre fight.”
But while he is a belt-holder, at age 25, with less than 20 pro outings, he’s still an evolving boxer. You can see it during sparring sessions as he works on perfecting a catch-and-counter style that goes against his amateur rep as a monstrous puncher. This reactive style of fighting has frustrated both his manager, and his trainer, Freddie Roach.
“He’s a great puncher and he’s very explosive and he wants to be a counter-puncher sometimes. Brian’s always at his best when he’s aggressive. We’ve all seen it, when he walks out there and just goes out there and blows guys away, he’s always exciting and fun to watch and gets guys out of there and that’s what people want to see little guys do. He’s one of those exceptions; he’s a little guy that can punch,” says Roach.
Viloria points out that he’s still learning the overall craft of boxing.
“I only have 19 fights as a professional and I know I had a lot of amateur experience and background but I think I’m still trying to get into my own as a professional,” he states. “I’m still trying to learn new things in the ring every time I got into the gym and train. I try to work on new things every time I’m in the ring sparring. So I’m still learning.”
But there was a reason he was given his moniker, and it wasn’t because he liked punch – it was because he could.
“Naturally, I am an aggressive fighter; I go out at the opponent and try to wear them down,” he admits. “I’ve been trying to learn how to box, how to move off the ring, work off the ropes. So I’ve been trying to incorporate a lot of things into the arsenal.”
He seems insistent on implementing his new style, so perhaps Roach will have to be content with him and his fighter finding a happy medium.
“True,” agreed the respected cornerman, “I think that’s the answer, and he comes back to the corner and I’ll ask him to do it and sometimes I’ll get a glimpse of it, sometimes I won’t. But he’s a pretty smart kid; he’s in control of things out there and he knows what he’s up to. As long as he keeps winning, I’ll be happy with it. But, I think he needs to win in better fashion than counterpunching to get that big Jorge Arce fight. I think he needs to win with knockouts.”
His opponent, by the way, stopped Arce when they were both 4-0 in their young careers.
With a big win in front of a huge throng of Hawaiian/Filipino partisans, and Viloria – a 1998 graduate of Waipahu High School – may have found himself a permanent home as a box-office attraction.
“It’s the perfect solution because the problem that Hawaii has always posed is the time difference. Three hours earlier there from California, which makes it six hours earlier than the east coast. It makes for a very, very difficult television coordination if you’re going to have any kind of live show,” Gittelsohn points out. “But with the kind of Hawaiian population that’s now basically migrated to Las Vegas, this is a home that makes sense.”
By the way, has he found some tickets for his in-coming VIPs?
“I haven’t yet,” Gittelsohn said with a chuckle late last week. “And if I have to go and pay a scalper’s price, I will.”
OLN RATINGS GAME
So how did the initial foray go on OLN a couple weeks back?
“The ratings that they got, they were ecstatic with it,” claimed Arum. “Considering two things – one, that they didn’t publicize it in the listings all over. So people weren’t aware of it. And it beat out any hockey game that they ever had. So it’s a great, great start. They love the content of the show, and they loved Kelly Pavlik and Anthony Thompson, who’ll be coming back.
“And now, they’re really going to publicize the next one in the sense that more people will be aware, etc. And I’m sure the audience will build. Our goal in the first year is to break a ‘1’ rating. We break a ‘1’ rating – that’s over 600,000 homes – that’s great.
Arum tells Maxboxing that the first broadcast got a .325 rating.
FREE AGENT
Featherweight standout Juan Manuel Marquez, who stopped the rugged Terdsak Jandaeng this past weekend to pick up the WBO interim featherweight title, is still a promotional free agent.
This last outing on Showtime was part of a doubleheader he co-headlined with his brother Rafael, who stopped the game Silence Mabuza to retain his IBF bantamweight crown. While his brother has inked a long-term deal with Gary Shaw, who promoted this show from Lake Tahoe, his brother hasn’t.
But Shaw is definitely in the running for his services.
“I don’t want to say he’s the top priority, but when he wakes up in the morning, it’ll be me next to him, tapping him, telling him it’s time to get up and catch the plane. I won’t let him out of my sight,” joked Shaw at the post-fight presser on Saturday night.
With the help of advisor Jaime Quintana, Shaw, unlike others in the past, seems to be forging a pretty good relationship with their trainer/manager Nacho Beristain.
“I get along really well with Nacho,” said Shaw.
Oh, so he’s the guy.
“I’m starting to get Nacho to smile and every time that he smiles a little more and I see the whites of his teeth, I know that I’m home free. But I think that Jaime’s been very important to me and the ability to get him,” the promoter said. “But I have to tell you, the more time that I spend with him, the more time – and I know I’m going to get myself in trouble – that they start to become family. And I think maybe Juan is starting to feel that.”
As for Rafa, who just keeps getting better and will be moving up to 122-pounds, Shaw says: “We’re not tied technically to Showtime or HBO. Showtime’s been very good to me, everybody knows that, and when I said I wanted a show with the Marquez brothers, they were there to support me. So if Ken Hershman and Showtime want the Marquez brothers, they have the Marquez brothers. It’s now their move.”
THROUGH THE FORREST
I may be in the minority, and Lou DiBella may cuss me out for this (which wouldn’t be the first time) but I thought Vernon Forrest outpointed Ike Quartey on Saturday night.
Now, I wasn’t there in person, but a lot of others who were ringside with no real rooting interest that I respect, like Carl Moretti of Main Events, also had Forrest winning.
I have no problems with anyone who tabbed ‘Bazooka’ the winner, but this was certainly no robbery.
It wasn’t even petty theft.
MID-WEEK FLURRIES
Arum says there are two OLN shows slated for the month of September on the 14th and 28th…. Listening to Lou DiBella after the Forrest-Quartey fight was reminiscent of hearing Tommy Lasorda’s opinion of Dave Kingman’s performance back in the day….I hear that December 16th will have another edition of HBO’s ‘Boxing After Dark’…. Jorge Paez Jr. could be getting a new trainer in Freddie Roach. He’s been at Wild Card the past week or so……
