Rios-Gamboa Heads to “The Bay”

By Steve Kim

The original plan from Top Rank called for former WBA lightweight titlist Brandon Rios and Yuriorkis Gamboa to co-headline an HBO televised doubleheader from the Home Depot Center in Carson, California, as a possible prelude to a showdown between the two later in the year. But as Johnny Molina and his promoter, Dan Goossen, battled each other. “Bam Bam” was left without a dance partner as March 3^rd loomed. Eventually, the decision was made to focus on Rios-Gamboa next and move the date to April 14^th to the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

 

As deadlines loomed last week, Todd duBoef, President of Top Rank, was dispatched to Miami, Florida to close the deal with Gamboa’s co-promoter, Ahmet Oner. If he wasn’t successful, for the time being, Rios and Gamboa would just go their separate ways.

 

duBoef closed like Mariano Rivera while in South Beach.

“A lot of it is education and explaining to them the climate and the understanding of the big fight and putting a big match like this together and working closely with our co-promoter and working out the details,” explained duBoef on Friday afternoon, after he returned to Las Vegas earlier that morning. When asked if he ever considered pulling the plug on this fight, he responded, “Well, I hate to say you had to give up but obviously, we were running up against a short window. Again, on a timeline to do effective promotion, for a fight like that one, you really wanted to pull the trigger a lot earlier.”

 

This is a face-off that is heavily anticipated amongst hardcore boxing aficionados. You have the hard-hitting, rugged Rios against the talented, speedy Gamboa, who is taking quite the risk in moving up to 135 pounds for this contest. But putting together fights of this nature can be difficult. While it’s one thing to play fantasy boxing, in order for bouts like this to become a reality, the needs of the promoters, the demands of the fighters and the expectations of the network (in this case, HBO) all have to intersect and come together. It helped that both boxers are under the Top Rank banner and that HBO yearned for this contest.

 

But why the Mandalay Bay? Perhaps it was the site fee they were dangling which would help fund this fight. However, duBoef stated, “The bottom line is, it was where the fight kinda fit well. I could’ve done it in L.A.- which, obviously, Rios has a decent following. I could’ve gone to Miami, which is obviously where we haven’t seen what the Gamboa following would be there. So those are kinda like fertile places that are unproven. But at the end of the day, this fight kinda reminded me of [Erik] Morales-[Marco Antonio] Barrera I. It reminded me of [Johnny] Tapia-[Paulie] Ayala, where you do it in that 5,000-seat Mandalay Bay, set it up for half-a-house, have reasonable ticket prices and those avid fans are going to come in. Just like they did for those fights. A [Jose Luis] Castillo-[Diego]Corrales, that first fight. Like the Pavilion at the Caesars Palace, there were incredible fights including [Sugar Ray] Leonard-[Wilfred] Benitez. Larry Holmes had fought there all the time with 4-5,000 seats. There’s nothing wrong with that and I think that was the expectation.

 “That this kinda made sense being the first kinda ‘Fight of the Year,’ lining up for an incredible second half of the year.”

 

When asked if “Sin City” provided a neutral setting that satisfied both parties, duBoef said, “Those conversations never came up but I can say this, I thought about ‘The Theater’ in New York. I thought that would’ve been a good place and I thought it’s a really good fighter’s fight. It’s got all the ingredients- no different than Mayweather and Corrales early on in their careers. The same thing and that happened at the MGM Grand, I see this having the same elements and I couldn’t get into Staples Center or do something like that and I’m sure if I really wanted to go outside at the Home Depot Center- and I think ‘The Theater’ was an obvious opportunity-  it wasn’t available. You want to give it that big presence that it’s an important fight and I think taking it to a Mandalay Bay has aligned perfectly.”

 

The recent trend in Vegas though has seen promotions with Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather and, to a lesser degree, Miguel Cotto do well at the gate. Everything else? Well...not so much (http://www.maxboxing.com/news/max-boxing-news/the-year-that-was-in-vegas). And from April 14 till June 30, this city will host five major cards (“major” constituting anything broadcast on HBO, Showtime or pay-per-view).

 

Will there be an oversaturation in this market?

“You have to figure out your product and I believe this product really has a big California reach to it. Gamboa’s fought a lot at Stateline; he did well. There’s pockets of the Cuban community that are in Las Vegas, in Southern California, that know him very well and I think you have localized pockets that you can get here early,” said duBoef, who believes strongly this event caters to the hardcore fan who may yearn for a trip to the 702 to see a fight but realistically can’t afford to attend the events on May 5^th or June 9^th. “And I think that’s what it’s all about; you’re hitting a niche business. Your niche audience is somewhere close in the proximity that they can jump in a car and be there in three, four hours and have an affordable ticket at 50 to 25 dollars. So that’s why it depends. If you have had in four months, four fights at $1,000 tops to $200, yeah [I’d be worried] because you’re dealing with a finite group of casino customers that can gamble at that level.

“That’s not what I’m looking to do. Every weekend, Las Vegas is packed with tourism now. The markets are coming back and you’re getting different people in the rotation and it’s not the guy that’s a $100,000 whale coming in for that fight necessarily. He may come to the Mayweather fight in May or definitely a Pacquiao fight but you’re having a different audience come in [for Rios-Gamboa].”

 

The Mandalay Bay on this night will be scaled for about 6,000 seats (the same set- up they used for the initial encounter between Barrera and Morales in 2000). As the fight was announced late last week, a strong buzz could be heard throughout the Worldwide Web. But how many of those folks on Twitter will actually come out to support the event with their hard-earned dollars? “I don’t worry about it because we’re 250 to 25 dollars. So you can’t get into a Mayweather fight for that. The Pacquiao fight, our cheapest ticket is $200 and there’s very few of them. So I think this hits a different market. It’s a different weekend. The barriers of entry are set up for a lot of fight fans that come from the Southern California area coming in from Miami to see a really good show and enjoy the night. It’s not tailored at the $1,000-plus-range crowd.”

 

duBoef says that half of the tickets for Rios-Gamboa will be $100 or less.