By Steve Kim
Whether it was the Monday morning pre-sale or the Tuesday general release of tickets, much of the public found it very difficult to purchase the tickets they wanted for the November 21st match-up at the Mandalay Bay between Miguel Cotto and Saul Alvarez. With a fight that is so highly anticipated and a capacity of approximately just 12,000 inside the Mandalay Bay Events Center, this was bound to happen.
The laws of supply-and-demand (along with the usual batch of tickets that goes to the casinos and brokers) were going to squeeze out the average fan, unfortunately.
"That's what it is, look, would I loved to have accommodate everyone - of course,"said Oscar De La Hoya, the head of Golden Boy Promotions, which represents 'Canelo' Alvarez.
"But sometimes it's impossible. The great thing is that people are once again - like the old days - when (Julio Cesar) Chavez used to fight, or myself, (Felix) 'Tito' Trinidad would fight, we're going to have those gatherings at home with the barbecues and people putting numbers in the basket, picking the rounds. We're going to relive those moments, once again, and most importantly we haven't announced a price on the pay-per-view but it's going to be a lot less than a hundred dollars."
De La Hoya is obviously referring to the May 2nd bout between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao which came with a steep pay-per-view price tag.
Industry insiders believed that if Cotto-Alvarez were held at say, AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas (the home of the Dallas Cowboys, which hosted a pair of Manny Pacquiao fights in 2010 to great success) that this promotion could have drawn in upwards of 75,000 fans. It would have been the ideal situation for allowing fans to actually buy their way into this event. Word is that Alvarez and Golden Boy were much more amenable to going this route than their counterparts who are involved in this fight.
"I mean, look, you could've put it at Wembley Stadium with a hundred-and-something-thousand people. Obviously, we are co-promoters, we're working with Cotto and Roc Nation(Sports) and for some reason it didn't take place in a bigger stadium but it's going to be a great event at the Mandalay Bay. We had fights like (Fernando) Vargas and me, Trinidad and Lennox Lewis knocking out (Hasim) Rahman. It's a beautiful venue," said De La Hoya.
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.