The fountains spraying liquid white gold from the pool in front of the Bellagio, the Eiffel Tower staring longingly at them from across the road, the fluorescent green MGM Grand monument, the fake castle, the gaudy pirate ship, the old, the new, the rich, the poor, the haves and the have nots. A walk down the Las Vegas Strip will give those who regularly attend fights a sickly glow of nostalgia.
Despite spending most of their time in press rooms buried deep inside the city’s hotels and convention centers, media members sometimes get to put their head above the parapet for a few hours and this is what they see.
In small doses, it can be entertaining, amusing, and certainly a break from the monotony of outrageously patterned walls and carpets on the windowless casino floors where, for all intents and purposes, it could be 4am or 4pm. Sure, the desert air is not always fresh. The heat can be stifling, but for many a boxing reporter, Las Vegas has become a home from home.
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Last year, when Gervonta “Tank” Davis fought Frank Martin and David Benavidez boxed Oleksandr Gvozdyk, MGM Grand Garden Arena hosted its 100th fight night. That was a helluva milestone, particularly when you consider that plenty of big fights have taken place elsewhere in the city, be it the T-Mobile Arena, Thomas and Mack, Mandalay Bay, or Caesars Palace.
It is at the Allegiant Stadium – the first time the football stadium has been used for boxing – on Saturday where the biggest non-heavyweight fight in several years takes place, when regular city visitors in the form of Canelo Alvarez and Terence Crawford will collide.
It is Canelo’s 20th work trip to Vegas, a successful business relationship that goes back to his win over Jose Miguel Cotto in 2010. Crawford made his Vegas bow a couple of years later, against Andre Gorges, and he’s shown out in Sin City 10 times since, including scoring his show-stopping demolition of Errol Spence in 2023 at the T-Mobile, delivering one of the finest performances in modern boxing.
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For BoxRec, there was a show in Las Vegas as far back as March 25, 1924, a Tuesday, at the Fairgrounds, and seven of the eight fighters reportedly on the bill were debutants. Fight nights followed at Beckley Hall, Legions Arena, Elks Stadium, the Helldorado Dance Hall, and the War Memorial Auditorium. In the 1940s, there were bouts at the Last Frontier Hotel – mostly on Mondays and Wednesdays – and in 1952 the fights came to Cashman Field, which was nearer the area we now know as Downtown than The Strip.
Before any of that, there had been significant fights elsewhere in Nevada – in Goldfield, Carson City, Reno, Boulder City – of course, but Vegas had not shaken its reputation predominantly as a mining-camp outpost and the nearest decent-sized spot to atomic bomb testing sites.
In 1955, however, what is often cited as the first major Las Vegas fight took place at Cashman Field in Las Vegas, when former light heavyweight champion Archie Moore won his heavyweight return with Cuban Nino Valdes.
The two had dressed as cowboys to promote the fight when they got into town.
Moore won the first time, too, and while there were some dissenters who thought the Cuban deserved to win the rematch, Moore took a 15-round decision.
The Boxing News report said the verdict was booed.
The Ring reported: “Most boxing writers agreed with the decision, but a few dissatisfied fans booed and tossed cushions, newspapers and programs into the ring. It was a mild demonstration.”
Valdes played his part, too. He theatrically dropped to his knees and beat the canvas with his gloves.
As one writer surmised: “Valdes failed his big test. That is what happened in Las Vegas.”
Ringside tickets were 30 bucks, seats in the bleachers were five.
Former heavyweight champion James J. Braddock, by the way, served as referee.
Of course, there was no way of telling how the momentum would grow in Las Vegas, to build it into the fight capital, but make no mistake about it, boxing was coming.
There were only a few indications at the time in the boxing periodicals that Las Vegas would represent a welcome change of scene from Miami, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia.
For example, in a caption for the Moore-Valdes fight, Ring enthusiastically explained: “Fabulous Las Vegas was the scene of the fifteen round heavyweight battle between Archie Moore and Nino Valdes.”
Things got more serious in 1956, too, when the Silver Slipper started comping guests to watch fights at their property, and they showcased the likes of Al Andrews vs. Randy Sandy, and Del Flanagan vs. Eusebio Hernandez, but with the influx of casinos in the 1960s, Las Vegas rapidly began to attract big fights.
Of course, it helped that there was plenty of entertainment on site, too. Frank Sinatra and The Rat Pack were in town, making it their own. A city of about 65,000 people (it was more than 2.4m in the Las Vegas valley in 2024) was expanding. Infrastructure was being created, turning a desert of sand and dreams of gold into one of neon and dreams of good fortune.
But while Moore-Valdes was a big fight, it wasn’t a championship fight. That first honor came when Benny Paret – another Cuban – decisioned Don Jordan for the welterweight title in the Convention Center on May 27, 1960. Fewer than 5,000 fans showed up, and it was a pretty drab encounter.
Las Vegas was not just glamor and flashing lights and championship fights. From the 1950s on, when the money started rolling in and the slots started paying out, organized crime shaped the spine of the city, and was involved from the bottom up. Certainly poor Jordan was one of many fighters unable to escape the clutches of the mob.
Ash Resnick was a mob figure and casino executive at the Thunderbird Hotel. He’d persuaded Madison Square Garden matchmaker Teddy Brenner to roll the dice and use Vegas for a title fight, and while the crowd for Paret-Jordan had been relatively small, the TV audience ran into the millions.
In 1961, a kid called Cassius Clay came to town and whipped Hawaii’s Duke Sabedong over 10 rounds in the future Muhammad Ali’s seventh pro fight, one of seven bouts Ali had in Sin City.
But Paret-Jordan was the one that demonstrably showed Las Vegas would work well as a fight town.
From a couple of arterial roads linking it with Southern California and a handful of flights each day, it grew quickly.
Paret fought Gene Fullmer up at middleweight in 1961 back at the Convention Center Rotunda, a venue that was widely being heralded as America’s finest arena, and Paret was battered badly, but the Cuban had played an integral role in bringing the fights to Vegas.
As the city blew up, the likes of Gene Fullmer and heavyweights Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston were pictured training in Thunderbird-sponsored T-shirts, although there already had been plenty of celebrity endorsements in boxing for the city. Sugar Ray Robinson announced one of his retirements while in town in 1951 – when the city was still segregated, meaning he couldn’t stay at the Sahara where he made the announcement – and he fought Fullmer there in 1961. Fullmer, from Salt Lake City, defeated Robinson there, too.
In 1963, the first heavyweight title fight saw mob-backed Liston squash Floyd Patterson in a round and, as the Las Vegas hold on boxing tightened, the International Hotel became the first to have a fight in their showroom when Liston fought Leotis Martin in 1969. The late George Foreman boxed on the undercard.
When Liston was the champ, his booth at the Thunderbird Hotel was cordoned off with a warning: “Sonny Liston, heavyweight champion of the world. No one sits here.”
Liston eventually moved to Vegas. He died there, too, having only fought three times at the town he arguably became synonymous with.
He is buried near the airport, where this week private jets from around the world will fly by, under a simple gravestone that reads ‘Charles “Sonny” Liston 1932-1970 – A Man”’.
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It was the lack of an iconic venue that meant Vegas hosted a lot of fights but it did not dominate the landscape.
In 1978, the Las Vegas Hilton unveiled their pavilion for Ali’s first fight with Leon Spinks, and two years later Ali was boxing Larry Holmes at Caesars in an arena set up in the car park.
The times were changing. Influential promoter Bob Arum, a Harvard graduate, set up shop in Las Vegas. Johnny Tocco’s Boxing Gym became one of the go-to training venues in the world, and ex-fighters could be seen everywhere. Most notably, heavyweight legend Joe Louis became a greeter at Caesars Palace. A marble statue of the great Louis still watches over gamblers there today.
In the 1980s, Vegas solidified its standing with a succession of superfights. Holmes boxed Gerry Cooney in a huge event, Marvin Hagler had five of his last six fights there, including against Sugar Ray Leonard, John Mugabi and Tommy Hearns; it was also where Hearns fought Leonard in 1981 and 1989, and where Leonard closed out his three-fight rivalry with Duran.
Duran carried on in Vegas through the 1990s, boxing the likes of Vinny Paz and William Joppy, by which point Mike Tyson had emerged as the attraction.
His heavyweight coronation was completed with his pummelling of Trevor Berbick for the WBC belt in 1986, and he beat countless more there – Bonecrusher Smith, Pinklon Thomas, Frank Bruno, dividing his fights between the desert and the New Jersey shore in Atlantic City.
But when Tyson was released from prison in 1995, Vegas was the only game in town and it was home to eight of his next nine fights and some of the most notorious moments in heavyweight history.
First up was his one-round bashing of Peter McNeeley, then came victories over the petrified Bruno and Bruce Seldon but Evander Holyfield delivered one of the great shocks to win their first fight, at the MGM. The rematch was the fateful Bite Fite, back at the MGM Grand, which is where Tyson later tried to break Frans Botha’s arm and nailed Orlin Norris after the bell.
By that point even Tyson had outstayed his welcome and he took his show on the road for the remainder of his career but the baton had since been passed.
Oscar De La Hoya was emerging, and he defeated the great Julio Cesar Chavez twice in Las Vegas, at the MGM. In fact, it was Julio Cesar Chavez who headlined the first boxing card at the MGM Grand, in January 1994, when Frankie Randall defeated him via split decision. It was also De La Hoya who opened proceedings at the Mandalay Bay in 1999, when he stopped Oba Carr in round 11.
The historic outdoor venues at Caesars, Dunes and others gave way to the arenas that were built, surely, with boxing in mind. The MGM Grand could cater for 16,000 or so fans, and the Mandalay Bay could take 12,000.
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There are not many firsts left for boxing in Las Vegas, but the first bout at the Allegiant Stadium this week is iconic. So much of the sport is now woven into pop culture fabric through its association with Las Vegas.
Las Vegas and boxing are hand-in-hand to the extent that the city features from a sporting perspective in countless movies. Where do the two fighters end up boxing at the end of Play it to the Bone, with Antonio Banderas and Woody Harrelson? Where did Lennox Lewis and Wladimir Klitschko share the fight that never was in the Oceans 11 remake?
So many great fighters and great fights have been etched into boxing’s rich tapestry through their fights in Vegas.
Madison Square Garden might be the mecca of boxing. Riyadh might have enticed many of the more recent big nights, and Wembley Stadium – Sweet Caroline and all – is the home of concert crowds and British heavyweights.
But Las Vegas is Fight Town. It wasn’t always that way, and it might not stay that way, but come Saturday all eyes will fall upon Sin City, the bell will sound and Las Vegas will do what Las Vegas does.
Tris Dixon covered his first amateur boxing fight in 1996. The former editor of Boxing News, he has written for a number of international publications and newspapers, including GQ and Men’s Health, and is a board member for the Ringside Charitable Trust and the Ring of Brotherhood. He has been a broadcaster for TNT Sports and hosts the popular “Boxing Life Stories” podcast. Dixon is a British Boxing Hall of Famer, an International Boxing Hall of Fame elector and is the author of five boxing books, including “Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing” (shortlisted for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year), “Warrior: A Champion’s Search for His Identity” (shortlisted for the Sunday Times International Sportsbook of the Year) and “The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing’s Wastelands.” You can reach him @trisdixon on X and Instagram.
