By Keith Idec
If the majority of boxing fans get their way, Oscar De La Hoya will take the Canelo Alvarez-Gennady Golovkin fight to the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium.
Dallas, as in the Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, won a four-option poll De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions posted on Twitter as the preferred site for the highly anticipated middleweight title fight September 16. The Cowboys’ stadium garnered 43 percent of the votes, 10 percent more than Las Vegas (T-Mobile Arena; 33 percent).
An unspecified site in New York, presumably Madison Square Garden, received 14 percent of the votes. An unnamed site in Los Angeles got 10 percent of the votes.
Voting closed Wednesday night for the poll, which drew 14,169 votes during a 24-hour period Tuesday and Wednesday.
De La Hoya, whose company promotes Alvarez, is intrigued by AT&T Stadium because he thinks the long-awaited showdown could draw more than 100,000 fans to the state-of-the-art stadium, which has a retractable roof. That would shatter the indoor attendance record for boxing in the United States, currently 63,500 for the Muhammad Ali-Leon Spinks rematch at The Superdome in New Orleans in September 1978.
Even if it doesn’t sell out the 100,000-seat venue, holding the fight at the home of the NFL’s Cowboys could draw a crowd comparable to the 90,000 that attended the Anthony Joshua-Wladimir Klitschko heavyweight title fight April 29 at Wembley Stadium in London. Deep-pocketed Cowboys owner Jerry Jones also could offer a site fee that could compete with the pitch from MGM Resorts International, co-owner of T-Mobile Arena, the 20,000-seat venue that opened last year just off the Las Vegas strip.
Average ticket prices at T-Mobile Arena would be higher for Alvarez-Golovkin, but selling so many more tickets to the fight at AT&T Stadium might make the difference in gate revenue negligible.
Jones has long expressed interest in bringing the bout between Mexico’s Alvarez (49-1-1, 34 KOs) and Kazkhstan’s Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs) to his stadium. The Cowboys are away the weekend for which Alvarez-Golovkin is scheduled (at Denver on September 17), thus the stadium is available.
De La Hoya and Jones have high hopes for the fight’s crowd potential because Alvarez’s ninth-round knockout of England’s Liam Smith, an unknown among American fans, drew a crowd of 51,240 to AT&T Stadium on September 17.
De La Hoya also has mentioned interest from investors in Dubai and the United Kingdom since the Alvarez-Golovkin fight was officially announced in the immediate aftermath of Alvarez’s 12-round domination of countryman Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (50-3-1, 32 KOs, 1 NC) on Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.