MONTREAL TAKES A TITLE FIGHT HIT
Championship bout moves to Toronto, and tickets for event are selling quickly
How did this happen? How did one of the best fights in boxing end up in fight dead Toronto?
The Leafs are out. The Raptors are out. Toronto FC is playing like they are out, the Blue Jays are flailing and the Argos haven’t started yet. And here in the city where boxing has normally gone to die, the light heavyweight champion almost nobody outside of Quebec knows, the power punching Adonis Stevenson, is taking on the very accomplished Badou Jack for the world title on Saturday night.
Welcome to Fight Week in Toronto, first time we can say that in more than a quarter of a century. This is the first fight of significance in this city since Donovan Boucher knocked out Shawn O’Sullivan. That was in 1988. And four years before that, Aaron Pryor took care of Nicky Furlano. And since then, a whole lot of talk, a whole lot of nothing.
Now this, Stevenson and Jack, light heavyweight champion and champion who had to relinquish his belt in order to get this fight. This is real, as real as boxing gets. And somehow, against all odds, with less than a month to put this card together, this ended up at the Air Canada Centre, best known for fights involving Tie Domi or Sam Mitchell.
Yvon Michel thought this fight was going to be held in Montreal. He had, in fact, planned for every aspect of it. Michel is the active promoter in Quebec and has been Stevenson’s promoter through good times and not so good times. Michel got a call from Al Haymon, Stevenson’s manager, telling him without much explanation that the fight was being moved from Montreal to Toronto. He didn’t tell him why.
Michel wasn’t at all happy about the decision. He had a date booked at the Bell Centre. He had started to work on the promotion. He had spent money on posters and promotion and all that goes in to putting on a fight of significance.
“We were just about to launch and I got the call,” said Michel. “That caused a lot of problems because people at the Bell Centre were very upset and couldn’t understand, could have rented the building for another show. They weren’t happy.”
He wanted to ask Haymon why. Sometimes in boxing you don’t ask. Michel was told he would be part of the promotion in Toronto.
So the fight goes on Saturday night, with the ACC shrunk to an 8,000 seat boxing friendly arena and tickets moving surprisingly well. Michel is one of the promoters.
Badou Jack is promoted by Floyd Mayweather’s company, Mayweather Promotions. The two groups needed a local component, so they brought in Lee Baxter, who has been trying to establish himself in boxing, as the local conduit.
The original thought from the Mayweather people was to put the fight at Budweiser Stage, where the overly successful mess that was the Mayweather-Conor McGregor press tour visited last August. The Mayweather camp was blown away by the turnout in Toronto. They thought, if this many people show up for a media event, imagine how many will turn out for boxing ?
Michel had to tell them — you can’t do an outdoor fight in Toronto in May. There’s no trusting the weather. So they got in touch with Wayne Zronik from Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, who has worked with Michel on a show at Ricoh Coliseum a few years back, and asked if the ACC would be available.
Before knowing if the Leafs or Raptors would be out, the date was available. The fight was on. Now the trouble was, how do you get people interested in fighters they don’t necessarily know or care about, with no local tie-in, no emotional connection, and do it all in about 20 days.
How do you do that and succeed? And yet tickets are moving, if everyone is telling the truth and because this is boxing, we need to say that. More than 5,000 tickets have been sold, I’m told. The prices are reasonable. Fight week is on.
The retired … is he really retired? Floyd Mayweather will be at the news conference Thursday morning. He’s an attraction without putting on the gloves. Badou Jack is his discovery. This will be handled the way a big fight is handled, with a too loud news conference, followed by a Friday weigh-in, the usual pushing and shoving that takes place before a fight goes on and they’ve even secured the Leafs young national anthem singer, Martina LuisOrtiz, to bring some Toronto presence to an event that will be televised by Showtime around the world.
“The feeling around Toronto is sick,” said Leonard Ellerbe, CEO of Mayweather Promotions. By sick, he meant good sick. Not sick as in close to death, like most Toronto boxing shows.
“This is a spectacular fight,” he said. “everyone is talking about this fight.”