It's fight day at the MGM Grand, and the Garden Arena staff arrived early with the venue ready for a clockwork running for an event which is sold out. The climax to the evening is Manny Pacquiao versus Juan Manuel Marquez. They are fighting for the third time, a trilogy of fights spanning seven years. Both have large followings, Filipino and Mexican respectively.
It beggars belief when 5,500 boxing fans come to a weigh-in. Even more so that they begin queuing at 8am to get into the MGM Grand Garden Arena to see the fighters on the scale six hours later. It feels like the event is being lifted several levels. I have witnessed it several times. The event is enhanced, the juice begins to flow. It happened on Friday.
And it only tends to happen only for a handful of names in the sport, and for particular match-ups: Any Manny Pacquiao fight, for Ricky Hatton's last two fights in Las Vegas, Floyd Mayweather, Oscar De La Hoya…the MGM Grand Garden Arena hums to the beat 24 hours before any of the real fistic action begins. It all adds to the hype and hysteria, promotion and prognostications.
The media room is a scene. It opens early in the morning every day from Monday onwards. It closes late in the evening. Promoters, their fighters and even fighters who are not their fighters pass through the place, moving, shaking, huddles breaking out as, say, Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, or any one of a number of current fighters pops through.
They are often on their way to visit a bank of radio stations positioned in an L-shape along the walls of the vast media room, perhaps 15 radio stations in all. Some of the voices of presenters can be heard booming through the large studio, where around 400 media people can be working at any one time. Some of the voices from the radio cavalcade sound like two men having arguments. They aren't. But let's face it…fight week is about several arguments. Wrapped in gloves.
The station broadcasting the event, in this case with Pacquiao-Marquez it's HBO, hums in the background, a large number of staff overseeing a large, in this case, pay-per-view event. It is expected to sell up to 1.5 million buys. That's a big number, and reflects the popularity of both men, and the fact that this is a trilogy fight.
Separate PR companies oversee the stories being created by the media, as Top Rank Inc. seek to get maximum exposure for Pacquiao, the fighting phenomenon who is transcending boxing to move into politics, and his opponent, the fine boxer Marquez.
In the media room, breakfast, lunch… and on fight night, dinner, are served. For this latest contest, over 1000 media accreditation requests were received.
Amy Zopfi, the Arena Event Services Manager for a number of years, who once handled all media credentials, explained:
"I love boxing, it creates a special atmosphere. It's where I come from, and it has created so many great events here. When Ricky Hatton fought Floyd Mayweather, the British fans were amazing. It was one of the biggest and craziest events we have ever done, but the fans were so courteous, and it was an amazing, fun event."
There were 16,000 fans in the arena that night, over 6000 at the weigh-in, trumpet band et al, and it is reckoned that almost 25,000 Brits passed through border control, over a third of the die-hard supporters only too well aware they would not even get to see the event live. The echo of 'There's only one Ricky Hatton…' being chanted through the MGM Grand is said to have gone on for weeks. They also drank the MGM Grand bars dry. And some.
Scott Ghertner, director of sports and promotions at MGM Mirage, is another figure prevalent in fight week with Zopfi. In the media room, they are part of the show. Behind the scenes, they are running the event like clockwork. Quite when they find the time to sleep is anybody's guess. "Based on the number of media applications, and there were more than one thousand, this is a major event," explained Ghertner. "But every event for us is major. It's an intricate process credentialling the media, based on lots of factors."
The two lynchpins for events here explained that with the Arena and HBO production numbers, there are huge numbers of people working the event. "There are at least 500 staff, there is catering every day, even down to the cocktail service inside the arena. Add in security, an usher team, Las Vegas Metro, we've got this place locked down from top to bottom," explained Zopfi.
Major fights are normally announced around 3 months in advance of taking place. Ghertner added: "We start planning as soon as fights are announced and depending on the size of the fight, we call boxing operations meetings with the promoter and we have a checklist we go through. Amy does a great job of overseeing these weekly meetings, and is a top leader in that effort."
Every detail is covered. "It's a big jigsaw, nowhere more so than in the arena, which is like an erector set and you have to work backwards in building it. It's amazing to watch it happen. Even more amazing than watching it go up is seeing the process of it coming down," added Zopfi.
Next week, there is a business convention in the arena, but the process will continue smoothly. In a four week span, it could be boxing, ice hockey, bull-riding and then a concert with The Eagles, as the sequence was recently.
Back in the media room, there are three generations of journalists, and perhaps a dozen nationalities. The crescendo is growing on fight night. Everything builds towards the main event. It is a pot-pourri of newspaper deadline writers, internet writers, boxing websites, bloggers, video journalists, and the players from television. Bert Sugar, the loud and venerated character is sadly not here for this contest. He is not well. Let's hope he returns soon.
Thomas Hauser, best known as Ali's biographer flits through the media room. Leon Gast, who made the documentary film When We Were Kings is now making a movie on Manny Pacquiao, and passes through with his crew.
Veteran promoter Bob Arum is always around. Top Rank No 2 Todd Deboef expounds with boundless enthusiasm about the developments he is creating at the company. The media room hums. It is a fertile ground where stories, ideas, and friendships germinate. And on Sunday, when the fights are done, it will fall quiet again, replaced by another group from another sphere. But nothing is quite as special as when this group of people come together in the fight capital of the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment