Columnist Ron Kantowski: Hip-hop boxing, straight outta … Pittsburgh?

Tuesday, May 16, 2000 | 11:15 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's notes column appears Tuesday. Reach him at ron@ lasvegassun.com or 259-4088.

If you don't have a tattoo or have never worn your baseball cap backward, you might not understand KO Nation, HBO's new once-a-month, Saturday afternoon boxing show.

This might be the best way to describe it: "I went to a rap concert the other night ... and a fight broke out."

The show made its debut a week ago last Saturday at The Igloo in Pittsburgh, which seemed like a weird place to introduce the concept that blends fisticuffs with urban music and dancing. That would be like opening an art exhibit in Cedar Rapids.

The prefight ceremonies included a troupe of limber go-go dancers known as "The Knockouts" (not to be confused with Joe Frazier's old backup singing group of the same name), a disc jockey host instead of a ring announcer (Ed Lover of "Yo MTV Raps" fame) and more lasers than a game at Coors Field with the wind blowing out.

Many in the crowd -- these would be the guys champing on cigars with their hats on forward -- looked as if they had died and gone straight to hell. Take away the Budweiser and add Mountain Dew, and it could have been the X Games.

"But it's not done for me or you," said Lee Samuels, a fifty-something publicist for Las Vegas' Top Rank Boxing to a forty-something reporter, noting that it was ESPN which first learned during a demographics study that the viewership for weekly boxing shows was getting younger.

So HBO, which has made boxing the staple of its sports programming, decided to give Generation X a fighting chance.

This old fogy can't fault the logic. If the TV audience is getting younger, then between the boxing fans HBO already has and the ones it hopes to cultivate, the hip-hop approach makes sense.

And any production that eliminates Michael Buffer's role in the festivities can't be all bad.

To say KO Nation has given boxing a new face might be overstating it. But it sure has given it a goatee and an earring once a month.

"I went to the production meeting," Samuels said of the pre-bout planning show in Pittsburgh. "There were a whole bunch of 25-year-old guys there with their hats on backward."

Citing snow flurries and frosty temperatures, the Las Vegas Stars and Salt Lake Buzz called off their game in Utah last Thursday. On the same day, UNLV played not one but two games in the Mountain West Conference women's softball tournament at the University of Utah, which went on as scheduled.

And here you thought it would be a cold day in Calgary before that happened.

Last Thursday, a day before the Bandits opened the second round of the International Basketball League playoffs against St. Louis, the nation's newspaper already had them trailing the series 1-0 on its scoreboard page.

As it turned out, USA Today was a little ahead of itself, but accurate. St. Louis won 113-106 here Friday night before eliminating Las Vegas on Monday.

* AROUND THE HORN: If college basketball coaches used theme music to prepare for battle in the method of prizefighters, Indiana University basketball coach Bob Knight could enter Assembly Hall to the soundtrack from "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." That's his career in a nutshell. ... Adding insult to very tragic injury: During an interview at Indianapolis Motor Speedway Sunday, ESPN's Dr. Jerry Punch repeatedly referred to paraplegic former race driver Sam Schmidt of Henderson as "Sam Smith." ... Andre Stewart, a star high school football player from Newport, Calif., was killed over the weekend when he lost control of his car -- a 1999 Nissan Altima -- and crashed on a California freeway. Back in my neighborhood, he might have been spared, because the rusted-out Tempests and Impalas most of us drove usually weren't freeway eligible. Stewart was travelin g at a high rate of speed and was not wearing a seat belt when he fell asleep at the wheel -- a triple-option that can get ! you killed in a hurry.

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