Mayweather snub a blow to GR

Mayweather snub a blow to GR

GR left off Mayweather's promotional tour
Thursday, February 08, 2007
By David Mayo
The Grand Rapids Press

GRAND RAPIDS -- Gerald R. Ford hosted a much better flyover of his hometown in death than the Oscar De La Hoya-Floyd Mayweather press tour will in life.

It is much easier to peer skyward and identify 21 fighter jets than two fighters' jets, after all.

This city's cold slap in the face isn't solely from frigid weather today.

The first unwarranted backhand has been landed in the De La Hoya-Mayweather media wars, and the hometown of boxing's pound-for-pound king absorbed it.

De La Hoya and Mayweather will engage an 11-city tour to hype their fight during the last nine days of February, De La Hoya's Golden Boy Promotions announced.

Grand Rapids, astonishingly, didn't make the cut.

It isn't as if the tour won't get close.

Detroit is on the list, as is Chicago, both on Feb. 22. The fighters will meet and greet in one city, get on their separate private jets, and fly to the next, five hours apart by car, one hour by air, almost directly over a top-50 U.S. market that virtually is equidistant from both, and that happens to be native home to one of the participants.

If there is some misconception that visiting Detroit equates to handling Mayweather's home market, it doesn't take long living here to debunk that one and understand how distinctly independent they are. There are plenty of Detroiters who would need a GPS navigation system to find their way to the foreign land of West Michigan.

Mayweather fought in Detroit in 2000, in a nontitle bout scheduled to piggyback the Mike Tyson-Andrew Golota fight the previous night in Auburn Hills. His win over Emanuel Augustus barely drew 2,000 paid to Cobo Hall. He never fought in Detroit before or since.

Miami also made the press tour.

Mayweather fought there twice. His 1998 title defense against Angel Manfredy drew about 3,000 to a tent-like structure next to Miccosukee casino, a half-hour west of downtown, on the edge of the Everglades. Mayweather also fought Henry Bruseles in 2005 at AmericanAirlines Arena, where just more than 4,000 attended.

Detroit and Miami have hosted three of the four smallest crowds for Mayweather's fights since he won his first championship. The other fight on that list was Mayweather's 1999 win over Carlos Gerena, which drew about 1,700 in a small Las Vegas ballroom.

Yet both Detroit and Miami made the press tour, with Miami particularly odd, since De La Hoya and Mayweather made media appearances there during Sunday's Super Bowl.

Everyone understands the need to hit major media centers and try to boost sagging markets -- but not to the exclusion of your base.

Outside New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and host Las Vegas, there isn't a stop on the press tour that makes more sense than Grand Rapids.

There also isn't a single city on the tour where the impact would have a more lingering presence than here, with the image of De La Hoya and Mayweather gracing the city together lasting right through their May 5 fight, and beyond -- and surely reflected in pay-per-view sales.

No one is blameless, not Golden Boy Promotions, and not Team Mayweather, which absolutely should have insisted on stopping here.

No one did, and although this is a practical area, populated with people who understand the two-wrongs theory, those same people will be asked to plop down $54.95 to watch The Big Fight Live.

That nut might be more palatable if they had seen The Big Fighters Live.

I know how to get to Grand Rapids. At least I think I do. I'd go up to Flint and then head West. I remember a sign saying it was however many miles away.

Don't see the big deal... Maybe they just figure since Grand Rapids isn't a huge city and Mayweather is indeed from there, it will already be fully riding the hype for this event.