But the fundamental change, as Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr. Riding to yesterday's prefight news conference by monorail (yes, the Simpsons episode did come to mind) was part of it, though, of course, this place was a Disneyland for grown-ups before Uncle Walt got around to building his. The differences now go way beyond the buildings here that have been levelled and rebuilt on ever more absurd themes, in ever more absurd proportions. There was a past, and everyone understood that there would be a future, that a few weeks or months later, it would all play out again. He had the elderly, obnoxious sportswriter Dick Young hauled out of a news conference, bodily, because he got tired of listening to him.Īll rich, heady stuff, but for a kid reporter, nothing beat having lunch with Archie Moore - winning his affection not just by paying the tab, but also by complimenting him on his hat - which was like being able to talk to Picasso about the last century of visual art.
Then he made those unfortunate remarks about the long-dead Rocky not being able to carry his jockstrap. The fight turned out to be a bit of a historic signpost in its own right.
OSCAR DE LA HOYA SWISS MANAGER PROFESSIONAL
In September of 1985, on the occasion of Larry Holmes's 49th professional fight, a heavyweight title defence against the reigning light-heavyweight champion, Michael Spinks, that would allow him to tie the great Rocky Marciano's undefeated record with a victory, there were folks in attendance who had watched Ali and Liston, who had seen Marciano and Louis, whose memories represented the unbroken connection in the sport every bit as much as any "linear" title. Look closely, and you can find him down in the corner, notebook in hand. There's a famous print of one of those great bouts at the Fives Court that Egan chronicled. But truth is, it really wasn't so much different from what Pierce Egan described in the early days of the 19th century: the gathering of "the fancy," the high and low-born, the stars and the millionaires and the grifters and the crooks the fight played out in the imagination first, the endless discussions of each boxer's strengths and weaknesses and, yes, the assemblage of the press.
The locale had shifted, the epicentre of the boxing universe had moved from London to New York to Las Vegas. It must have been the same 20 years before that, and before that and before that, in the days building up to a big match, dating back to the ancient origins of prize fighting. Arriving for the first time at one of these, a couple of decades back, there was the sense of stepping into a great continuum.
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