Dallas tries to make Pacquiao fight a big event

Bandera First Posted 07:30:00 03/13/2010 Filed Under:

Dallas tries to make Pacquiao fight a big event

ARLINGTON, Texas — The czar of boxing was so devastated the fight didn’t happen, it took him weeks to get over it.

The (not Don) King of promoters was so mad he could barely utter Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s name.

And the emperor of Dallas felt like he had just lost the Super Bowl.

“I wanted that fight here with those two fighters worse than my next breath,” Jerry Jones said.

The fight, of course, was Mayweather against Manny Pacquiao, and it fell apart despite the frenzied efforts of some of the biggest names in boxing and one of the biggest egos in Texas. If not for a dispute over blood testing, it might have filled Cowboy Stadium and given Jones the kind of megafight he believes his new $1.2 billion edifice rightfully deserves.

Instead, he had to settle for the hottest fighter in the game. He got Pacquiao, but even a salesman like Jones can’t fool anyone into believing Joshua Clottey is Mayweather.

So he’s selling Pacman. He’s selling the event which, appropriately enough, is titled “The Event.”

Mostly, he’s selling his stadium.

“This is going to be big time,” Jones said. “I’m going to over-deliver.”

That should make the 45,000 fans expected to show up tomorrow happy, and it will certainly please de facto boxing boss Ross Greenburg and promoter Bob Arum. They couldn’t put together the fight that everyone wanted but, between the show in Dallas and the May 1 show featuring Mayweather against Shane Mosley in Las Vegas, they’ve rebounded to produce a decent substitute.

They also have a new ally for the sport in Jones.

“The thing that’s blown me away is what an unbelievable promoter this guy is,” Arum said. “He never gets tired. We took a two-day trip to Mexico and he was able to drink everybody under the table and kept going. He gave dozens and dozens of interviews to Mexican media outlets. It’s really something to see.”

Dallas is hardly Las Vegas, of course, and once the novelty act that is the stadium starts to wear thin Jones will need a better matchup to fill so many seats. Clottey is a fine enough fighter, but he’s never sold a ticket on his own, and oddsmakers make him a 5-1 underdog in the welterweight bout against a fighter who seems to get better with each fight.

But his plan to invite Dallas Cowboys of old and present, toss in a few cheerleaders and show it all on the huge overhead screens that will reveal every drop of sweat, should be more than enough to make it a memorable evening, if not a great show.

It should also be enough to get respectable pay-per-view numbers. — AP

© 2009 Bandera. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.