By Rick Reeno
During the course of the the last few weeks, there has been a public battle between heavyweights champions Wladimir Klitschko and David Haye. Besides a dispute pertaining to the financial details, the two boxers have bickered over the location of a potential fight. Haye would prefer to have the contest in London, England, while Klitschko would like to stage the fight in Germany.
Richard Schaefer, the CEO for Golden Boy Promotions, who co-promote Haye, would like to bring the fight to Las Vegas. Schaefer believes the fight could potentially generate just as much money in Las Vegas, if not more, than England or Germany.
Later this week, Schaefer plans to sit down with Haye and his manager Adam Booth, in an effort to lay down the groundwork for a fight with Klitschko in 2011. Haye traveled over to Las Vegas to support his close friend Amir Khan, who defends his junior welterweight title against Marcos Maidana this Saturday at the Mandalay Bay.
"I obviously think that a fight like that is prime for a Wembley Stadium. I think it's going to be one of the biggest heavyweight showdowns of recent times. The actual place, in my opinion, would be Wembley Stadium. However, having said that, keep in mind that when we did Floyd Mayweather against Ricky Hatton here in Las Vegas [in 2007], that could have easily been a Wembley Stadium fight. But, what we did by doing the fight here was we created an additional pool of money, so we had two pools of money and we had a huge gate here in Las Vegas," Schaefer told BoxingScene.com.
"Based on what I've seen, [the gate] is going to be just as big as a gate in England or Germany, and we can create a pay-per-view pot here in the United States as well. You can create additional revenues that would obviously be lost if the fight happens in Europe.
Schaefer also references the Mayweather-Hatton fight when making his point about the overseas pay-per-view buyrate, and how staging the fight in Las Vegas will not affect the numbers.
"As Ricky Hatton has shown, if you have a big fight in Las Vegas, that doesn't mean that you won't do good pay-per-view business in the UK because Ricky Hatton against Floyd Mayweather holds the all-time British pay-per-view record. I believe it was like 1.2 million homes and I think the next closest was a Frank Bruno fight that did 700,000, which Ricky almost doubled and that fight was in Las Vegas. It's going to be up the teams where the fight will ultimately land, but it might be in Las Vegas."
