Columnist Dean Juipe: Fight card looks to be overpriced

Dean Juipe

Friday, June 25, 1999 | 10:17 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebookappears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

This time the cart is in front of the horse.

Ordinarily in boxing, stars emerge and the most marketable of them work their way to the type of big fight that attracts so much widespread attention it can be exploited on pay-per-view television. It's a system that works within the entertainment industry as well.

Very few boxers have pay-per-view potential. In fact the present crop can be counted on one hand.

Johnny Tapia is not among them.

Yet Tapia's fight Saturday with Paulie Ayala at Mandalay Bay is on pay-per-view, with promoter Bob Arum subtly attempting to make a star out of a man who may not have star qualities. Arum, by inference, is trying to tell people Tapia is pay-per-view material even though he fights at a relatively unappealing weight (118 pounds) and, more to the point, has a serious lack of power.

Tapia vs. Ayala is going for $29.95 on pay-per-view. Curiously, you can go to the arena and see the card live for as little as $25.

"This is a good test of his drawing power," Arum said of Tapia, who is 46-0-2 but with a lackluster 25 knockouts. Truth is, he has knocked out only two of his last eight opponents in title fights and that type of record usually keeps a fighter in the middle of the food chain.

Worse, from a fan's point of view, is the fact Ayala has even less going for him than Tapia and is almost devoid of noticeable power. Ayala is 27-1 but with only 12 knockouts.

It's entirely possible Tapia and Ayala could fight 20 rounds without knocking each other down. As it is, there's a good chance they go the scheduled 12 and leave the result up to the judges.

While boxing has seen the occasional $9.95 pay-per-view card achieve moderate success, never has such a mediocre fight been priced at $29.95.

"I'm hoping for 100,000 (buys)," Arum said. "That would be a home run."

He feels the card will be purchased in at least 60,000 homes, which he calls "a slight loss for us, but something that's worth the gamble."

At 100,000, Arum said Tapia would become "the new Michael Carbajal" in that he's able to tap into the Hispanic/American market and separate himself from the run-of-the-mill champions.

But adding to the questionable nature of putting this fight on pay-per-view is the across-the-board belief that Ayala really has very little shot at winning. He may only be a 6-to-1 underdog in the sports book, yet a more realistic figure would probably be 15-to-1.

The end result for boxing fans is that it will cost a few bucks to see Tapia win a dull fight. Maybe it's one of those "smoke 'em if you got 'em" things in that if you're feeling you have the extra cash, you might be tempted to tune in.

But the primary undercard fight also took a hit this week when Peter McNeeley showed himself to be a bit fragile when he broke down sobbing at a press conference. He's fighting Eric "Butterbean" Esch in a four-round heavyweight bout that looked appealing until McNeeley wilted while reminiscing about his crack cocaine habit.

While Esch had the good sense to not sit there and laugh, he had to be thinking "this is going to be easier than I expected."

If 100,000 people purchase this card, boxing is in better shape than anyone thought.