The whiners are getting very quiet.
All that moaning and groaning, all the bitch, bitch, bitching...about how awful it is that the Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.-Sergio Martinez and Canelo Alvarez-Josesito Lopez fight cards are banging heads on the same night less than a mile apart in Las Vegas...
But, when promoters compete, the public often wins. In this particular case, it's one of Nevada's biggest boxing nights in memory.
There will be 19,186 paid customers Saturday night at the Thomas & Mack Center on the UNLV Running Rebels campus, all of them hoping to see a classic ring war between Young Chavez and the former bicycle racer and middleweight champ from Argentina.
It burns Martinez's ego and his pocket that the Son of the Mexican Legend is guaranteed $3 million to his $1.4 million. And it certainly concerns Sergio and his camp that they are scrapping for the WBC title, what with WBC Boss For Life Jose Sulaiman being JC Junior's godfather and having made a public bet with a media figure that his countryman will win.
(It would be disastrous if the Chavez-Martinez bout ends with a ridiculous decision the way the judges botched Tim Bradley-Manny Pacquiao last June. Perhaps it's not likely given that two solid Vegas judges (Adailaide Byrd and Dave Moretti) are assigned along with respected South African official Stanley Christodoulu. The latter is identified with WBC rival group WBA, something else Don Jose is crying about.)
So Bob Arum's Top Rank has a full house and a raucous, Mexican Independence Weekend throng ready for Chavez and Martinez to swap punches in bunches.
Up the street, at the MGM Grand, Golden Boy's show is also a winner, with the precocious and immensely popular "Carrot Top" Alvarez picking on game but smaller physically Lopez as the main event of what looks like a solid card.
Late Friday, it was announced that Canelo's card had sold about 15,000 seats, not chopped liver either.
Some fight fans complain about not being able to catch both main events live but that's why they invented Tivo.
If the fighters deliver the drama, this will go down as a terrific fistic weekend, both locally and on TV (Showtime for Canelo, HBO PPV for Chavez-Martinez).
The cab drivers, the waiters, the busboys and the casino pit bosses, you won't hear them complaining about two big boxing shows being held on the same night.
Both casino host hotels MGM Grand and The Wynn won't be moaning either as the thousands of holiday revelers are bound to jack up the casino money "drop."
As to who drops in the ring, it says here:
Chavez by split decision over Martinez but he gets off the deck to nab a thin verdict.
And Canelo decimates Lopez, TKO 7.
Boom weekend for boxing, on the tube and in Vegas.
This is something to complain about? I guess some of y'all cannot stand prosperity.
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