Boxing Preview: De La Hoya v Mayweather Jr.

Massive Photo Gallery ©Jim Everett/SaddoBoxing

The World Awaits NY Press Conference

New York City has been a center of the world’s financial system since the early 1940’s and resident to several of the world’s most influential financial institutions and stock markets. Today, it marked the beginning of an eleven city press tour for two of the most influential fighters in the sport of boxing. What better place to begin the promotion of the mega-fight that is anticipated to be the biggest financial boxing event the sport has ever experienced.

Six division world champion, Oscar De La Hoya will face unbeaten, four division world champion, Floyd Mayweather, Jr on May 5, 2007 for the WBC Light Middleweight title in an event called “The World Awaits”. The sold out event will take place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas , NV and will be broadcast live on HBO Pay-Per-View.

Tickets to “The Golden Boy” against the “Pretty Boy” sold out in three hours establishing a record gate of $19 million. The previous record of $16.8 million was set by Lennox Lewis v Evander Holyfield II in November of 1999. Unfortunately, the public did not have much of a chance to purchase tickets. Of the 16,800 seats at the MGM Grand only 3,000 seats were made available for purchase to the public. The remaining 13,800 seats went to the promoters, sponsors and VIPs.

In addition to the record gate, “The World Awaits” is expected to break previous merchandising and Pay-Per-View records in the sport as well as have an excess of $70 million in marketing exposure. Richard Schaefer, the chief executive of Golden Boy Promotions would also add that as of last count the fight will be shown in an amazing new record of 176 countries.

Now… I am well aware that a lot of things are done at these press conferences to hype a fight. That’s what they are supposed to do. All the record breaking facts and figures are exciting and will be a part of history but I have to say there is nothing like trash talking and a good old fashioned stare down by the fighters to start things off with some proper hype.

Floyd Mayweather was announced first and took his time walking down the red carpet stage; greeting media and posing for photos. As they were about to announce Oscar De La Hoya I noticed Mayweather taking off his jacket and untucking his shirt and I looked forward to some sort of confrontation. Before De La Hoya could make it to the end of the stage Mayweather stripped off his shirt flexing his muscles and showing off his incredible shape. De La Hoya responded by throwing down his suit jacket, loosening his tie and shirt to expose his equally impressive chest and pectoral muscles.

The confrontation continued when “Pretty Boy” Floyd took the podium and began the trash talking. “I respect Oscar as a man before I respect him as a fighter, but do I respect his fight game, hell no!” He would then taunt De La Hoya stating if he could run like him he could have beat Trinidad . In closing Mayweather stated, “A hot offense always beats a cold defense. I can stand there toe to toe with you, if you want to step up to the plate, get on up here and tell the people what you are gonna do… you ain’t gonna do shit!”

“The Golden Boy” came to the podium staring down Mayweather. “I respect Floyd as a fighter; you have got to give him that. He is the best pound for pound fighter in the world.” Although more eloquent, he closed with some strong statements of his own, “When I touch you, you’re going to hurt for a week; and believe me, come May 5th I’m going to give you something to cry about.”

If the speeches weren’t enough hype, the stare down was the climax of the presser. Each fighter faced off to one another. De La Hoya looked stern and stared down his opponent. Mayweather continued his trash talking and pressed his chest against Oscar’s to attempt to provoke a confrontation. The crowd cheered and applauded all the bravado.

We can only hope the hype during the press tour is as exciting as the fight on May 5th. Records will be broken, but what will be important to the fans in attendance and the millions watching around the world is if the fight lives up to its legacy. “The World Awaits.”