Before the week ends in this city mourning the death of Yankees icon Joe DiMaggio, new life will be breathed into a Manhattan boxing venue with a legendary past.
Madison Square Garden, with a pair of red 25-foot-tall boxing-glove balloons atop an entrance outside and a 19,000-seat sellout inside, is poised for its biggest boxing event in nearly three decades.
Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis will fight Saturday night in a rare “winner take all” heavyweight title bout. The victor will be able to claim that he is undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.
Oh, there could be dispute from lesser boxing organizations that also award title belts in this age of diluted competition. But Holyfield will bring two of the three major championship belts and Lewis will carry the third into the ring Saturday for their scheduled 12-round bout.
Whenever a heavyweight title fight is perceived as matching the top two opponents available, as this one is, it takes on the aura of a “Superman” competition to decide who’s best among boxing’s biggest.
With the 6-foot-5-inch Lewis weighing in 31 pounds heavier than his opponent and the 6-2 1/2 Holyfield vowing to knock out Lewis in the third round, giant expectations are in place.
No matter who wins, though, Madison Square Garden already has by landing one of the biggest bouts in recent years.
It took an $8.3 million purse bid to get the fight, a risk that will turn into a profit. The bout sold out rapidly, leaving promoters only the task of urging fans to buy pay-per-view at a suggested price of $50 for Saturday’s main event and undercard, beginning at 8 p.m. on TVKO.
Don King is one of the promoters, so his final sales pitch this week was predictably ornate.
Hyping Lewis-Holyfield as a fight to decide the “unmitigated, unadulterated and undisputed” heavyweight title, as an event to “resurrect” the arena that is boxing’s “mecca,” King predicted that “every tot” in America would be talking about the fight.
Taking considerably less time at the microphone, Holyfield reiterated his prediction of a third-round knockout.
Lewis said he is eager for the hype to end and the fight to begin. “I’ll walk into the ring with one belt and come out with three,” he said.
Nestled into the New York arena’s busy schedule this month–including Knicks hoops, Rangers hockey and three concerts by hip-hop Grammy-grabber Lauryn Hill–the fight gets top billing in the Garden’s March brochure.
Not since Joe Frazier beat Muhammad Ali at the Garden on March 8, 1971, has the arena held as much boxing buzz.
“I love it. I’m getting goosebumps,” said Nate Jones, the 1996 Olympic bronze medalist heavyweight from Chicago who will fight on Saturday’s undercard. “This gives me the feel of big events.”
More than 800 media credentials have been issued, with another 500 applicants turned away.
