Top Rank CEO Bob Arum has just completed the deal with Yankees Stadium to hold WBA junior middleweight (154 pounds) champion, Yuri Foreman's June 5 defense of his title against Puerto Rican former three-time world champion, Miguel Cotto, at the venue.
"The deal is done, and we're looking forward to a great event at Yankees Stadium. It's of historic significance, which, of course, is well-known. Hopefully, this will start a new era for boxing at Yankees Stadium," said Arum, 78. "I think it's a great thing for boxing, and I'm very, very happy about it."
(From left to right, Cotto, Felix Trinidad and Foreman are pictured at right above).
Arum has been working out the details with Yankees' chief operating officer Lonn Trost, and, head HBO sports officials such as Ross Greenburg and Kerry Davis.
"I'm not sure when tickets will go on sale, but certainly not until the end of March. We have to get the whole campaign in order," said Arum. "But it will be scaled from $50 to $400."
Arum already has secured the March 13 WBO welterweight (147 pounds) clash between seven-division king Manny Pacquiao (50-3-2, 38 KOs) and Joshua Clottey (35-3, KOs) at Dallas Cowboys' Stadium in Arlington, Tex.
Boxing's future, said Arum, lies in outdoor stadium bouts such as Foreman-Cotto and Pacquiao-Clottey.
"I think that outdoor stadiums are the way to go. Oversees, they've been doing it for a while," said Arum, who promoted the last boxing match at the old Yankees Stadium in 1976, when Muhammad Ali earned a 15-round decision over Ken Norton against the backdrop of a police strike.
"I really think that putting boxing in venues is the way to go," Arum said, "because I think that it elevates the sport, and that it elevates interest in the sport, and I'm happy that I'm bringing it back."
The Foreman-Cotto bout will share the evening with a bar mitzvah party which initially threatened the fight being held there.
But accommodations were worked out with the family of the boy, Scott Ballan, to hold the party and the fight on the same night for the first time in the stadium's history.
About 150 guests for the bar mitzvah party for the son of Yankees' lead bond lawyer Jon Ballan will be given tickets that will allow them to spend the evening celebrating the boy as well as watching Foreman-Cotto.
Foreman is studying to be a rabbi along with being the first Israeli to win a professional boxing title, a feat with November's 12-round unanimous decision over Puerto Rico's Daniel Santos.
Cotto has been a big draw at Madison Square Garden due to the large Puerto Rican population in the area, and is 6-0 at Madison Square Garden, where he has decisioned Clottey, Shane Mosley, and Paulie Malignaggi, and knocked out Zab Judah.
"In Yankees Stadium, you have the Puerto Rican icon, Miguel Cotto, who is struggling to get back into the mix. And he's going up against this orthodox Jewish champion, who is extremely unique in the sport," said Arum.
"There's a tremendous Puerto Rican population in the New York-Metropolitan area, and there are more Jewish people in New York then there are in Tel Aviv," said Arum. "So it's a very, very major city for Jews, and we expect that both the Puerto Ricans and the Jews will come out, as well as other people, to support this event."
Pacquiao-Clottey represents the first boxing match to be held at the Cowboys Stadium, whose domed facility seats 80,000, but is expandable enough so that it can hold up to 111,000.
The stadium's major feature, a gargantuan, high-definition screen known as "Jerry-Tron," after stadium owner, Jerry Jones, which is believed to be the largest in the world.
Arum watched the Cowboys defeat the Eagles, 34-14, in a January, first- round, playoff game from Jones' luxurious box suite along with Top Rank president Todd duBoef.
"As far as Pacquiao-Clottey, it's a legitimate, welterweight fight, and it features the most recognizable and most popular fighter in the world today, Manny Pacquiao, who people know has never been in a dull fight," said Arum.
"Every one of Pacquiao's fights is exciting, they're interesting, and they're experiences that, when you see them, you remember them for the rest of you life," said Arum. "And people want to witness a Pacquiao fight in person. Particularly a competitive Pacquiao fight, which, the fight with Clottey is. And that's what you have to have in a place like a Cowboys' Stadium."
Cowboys Stadium has a retractable ceiling that protects against rain, and boasts over 3,000 Sony LCD displays throughout the luxury suites, concourses, concession areas and more.
The setup allows fans the ability to watch the action beyond just the field as most, if not all of the displays, will be operating on fight night, according to Jones.
Arum said that even though Cowboys Stadium has been set up to seat 45,000, it is likely to expand due to an expected sellout.
"At Cowboys Stadium, we have under 7,000 tickets left to sell," said Arum. "So when we sell those 7,000, which we expect to do, we'll have an absolute sellout."
Source: boxing.fanhouse.com
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