Columnist Dean Juipe: Fight card backed into a corner

Dean Juipe

Monday, Feb. 24, 2003 | 9:53 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

It's a beautiful arena and the largest facility of its type in Las Vegas. And when the Thomas & Mack Center hosts a boxing card, it can accommodate up to 19,522 spectators.

But there won't be anything resembling a crowd of that enormity Saturday at the T&M when World Boxing Association heavyweight champion John Ruiz defends his title against former undisputed light heavyweight champion Roy Jones, Jr.

In fact, the building may be less than half full.

"What do you think would be considered a good crowd?" a man with ties not only to boxing but to the host casino, Caesars Palace, asked me last week. When I replied "12,000" he responded with a dismissing wave of his hand.

"Maybe 7,500," was his prediction.

A follow-up inquiry Sunday with a Caesars rep brought this assessment: "There are a lot of tickets left," she said.

The trouble isn't that Ruiz vs. Jones won't be an interesting fight or that the card lacks clout. There are also several fairly attractive fights beneath the main event, and, on the whole, it's a pretty strong show on paper.

But the fight card has its built-in limitations, given its position preceding Sunday's NASCAR Winston Cup race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway which is expected to draw 140,000 spectators. The greatest hindrance: Despite outrageous rates, seemingly every hotel room in the city is spoken for by racing enthusiasts who made their reservations months ago.

And that means Ruiz vs. Jones must either tap into the race crowd that's here or draw disproportionately from the pool of local boxing fans. Either way, it's a risky proposition and it may doom the boxing card to be, at best, a loss leader for Caesars (and its parent company, Park Place) and, to a lesser extent, promoter Don King.

King is paying Jones $10 million (plus a percentage of the pay-per-view receipts) and Ruiz $5 million (plus), while tickets are priced from $100 to $1,200 and the pay-per-view fee is $50. HBO expects 400,000 pay-per-view buys, which is a bit substandard for a fight of this magnitude yet reflective of the participants' less-than-dazzling drawing power.

Under the best of circumstances a capacity crowd would offset a number of the inherent expenses, including the pricey undercard, but King apparently won't have that income at his disposal.

The miscalculation, if there is one, is that racing fans are closet boxing fans. While the sports enjoy certain similarities -- each has rowdy, alcohol-swilling fans looking to see the guys have their blocks knocked off or unceremoniously take one to the kisser -- there is no proven statistical link between the two.

Also, directly up against the fight on Saturday night is a World of Outlaws feature at the Speedway's dirt track that will draw around 10,000 people who would rather suck up exhaust fumes than have blood splattered on them ringside.

On the pretense that racing fans have disposable incomes and that they treat this weekend as a vacation, boxing has been tied to the race in Las Vegas in each of the last four years. But this is the first time the boxing card has been in such a huge venue and without a strong Hispanic pull.

If the T&M is actually less than half full Saturday, the evidence will be in: drinking, driving and fighting really don't mix.

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