By Jake Donovan
The middleweight title fight between Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Andy Lee has been a hot ticket, with more than 20,000 sold heading into Saturday’s show at the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas. HBO will televise the scheduled 12-round bout, which tops a card that figures to boast in the neighborhood of 25,000 by fight night.
It’s not often that an event moving that well prompts a promoter to begin giving away tickets, but Top Rank has found a pair of causes that make the gesture necessary.
“We sometimes forget the debt we owe to the amateur program,” Hall of Fame promoter Bob Arum stated to the assembled media and crowd on hand for Thursday’s pre-fight press conference. “Without the amateurs, we wouldn’t have fighters who compete in professional boxing.
“We recently had in El Paso a Golden Gloves contest, with 122 young men competing. We’re going to offer each of those young boxers two tickets to the fight. It will be great to have all of those amateur boxers at the event on Saturday.”
Also benefiting from Top Rank’s generosity are the folks from Fort Bliss, the United States military base which is minutes from the venue.
“We’ve also arranged with Fort Bliss to invite the wounded warriors to attend,” Arum continued. “They’ve gave so much in defense of this country. Anything that any of us can do to pay them back is certainly very worthwhile.”
Jake Donovan is the Managing Editor of Boxingscene.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at twitter.com/JakeNDaBox or submit questions/comments to JakeNDaBox@gmail.com.
