BOXING AT THE COSMOPOLITAN

BY JOHN MASTALIR jmastalir@yahoo.com

SURREAL TO SAY THE LEAST ! ! !

Las Vegas newest hotel-casino has jumped into small clubesque type boxing shows twice now, since the hotel opened this year. Great facility, right on the Las Vegas strip, both shows on ESPN, the first on Friday night fights indoors....Friday..... on ESPN3 broadcast Saturday on ESPN2 from the outdoor ring at the Boulevard pool. Weather raised hell with this, it was cold and windy and at 4:30pm they disassembled the canopy for safety and for the first time ever we saw outdoor boxing truly under the open sky.

What a beautiful luxurious facility with a monstrous screen over the strip. That too had issues as some awful technical work with the cameras shoved the sight lines in too close and 3 replays of a knockout were lost to bad directing and screen size. I have to apologize, I went to communications school with a broadcasting degree and they taught us to open up the camera and show everything...not here. After the knockout in the main event we went to the replay and it was not there!

Anyway the Cosmopolitan is a first class act with two neat venues and they had real bad luck with weather on their outdoor show...the concept though very clever. Lots of three piece suit high roller types in the decent crowd trying to stay warm and look for good boxing matches.

Not this night. The card was weak and for sure the weather did not provide a great background for boxing and neither did the first three fights which were on TV Saturday.

Semi main Hylon William 14-0 unanimous 79-73,79-73 and 77-77 decision over lightweight Marcos Herrera 6-5-1.

Main event Carlos Molina 18-4-2 an eighth round TKO at 2:08 over Allen Conyers 12-5, Molina actually down early but dominated a lackluster match with the final punch missed on the 8000 foot screen on all three replays over the Las Vegas strip.

Two shivering heavyweights slouched through 4 rounds and then 4 more matches followed, possibly with the best matches at the end.

A difficult program setup here...I always want everyone to succeed and do well, altho the weather, staging and fight order along with the TV mystery confused everyone but ESPN'S ring announcer.

Thank you Cosmopolitan for your facility and premise here...hopefully you can tie up the lose ends and provide better matches in the future.

85 B