ARENA STOOD OUT AS SITE FOR UNITY
Manchester Arena, now synonymous with suffering after Monday’s apparent suicide bombing, is not the most beautiful of entertainment venues, but it has always been a rousing one.
When musical acts play, whether they be homegrown lads such as Oasis, New Order or Simply Red, or those from far afield, such as Ariana Grande who was there Monday, the place bounces with energy.
Yet it is sports that has provided the 21,000-seat indoor stadium with its most memorable nights. The arena, for much of its 22-year existence known as the MEN, after the local Manchester
Evening News newspaper, is a venue where the noise hangs in the air and home advantage is a tangible factor.
It was usually so for Amir Khan, a British boxer and a pillar of the United Kingdom’s Muslim community. And for Ricky Hatton, who dethroned junior welterweight king Kostya Tszya there in 2005 on the biggest night of his career.
Mike Tyson fought at the arena in 2000. He ventured north to Manchester after an extraordinary spending spree in London’s priciest department stores and flattened veteran punching bag Julius Francis within two rounds. A British newspaper paid to put its logo on the sole of Francis’ boots, so confident it was that he would end up on his back.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship has been a regular visitor, too, hosting three of its signature pay-per-view events there, most recently UFC 204 in October featuring Michael Bisping ’s middleweight title defense against Dan Henderson.
To those who witnessed nights like these — joyous, electrifying occasions, filled with feverish and spontaneous chanting — the shocking pictures and accounts of Monday night’s attack stuns the spirit and freezes the mind.
The arena has been a unifying beacon in a city that is often divided by sports, the sky blue of Manchester City and the bright red of Manchester United giving rise to tribal allegiance of deep cultural and historical importance. Tuesday, a few miles down the road from Manchester Arena, the United team — deep in preparations for Wednesday’s Europa League final — held a minute of silence for the victims; 22 dead and 59 injured.
The arena was a pivotal part in a pair of spirited yet ultimately overpowered Olympic bids in 1996 and 2000, before British sports authorities realized that London offered a greater chance of being granted hosting rights.
It eventually played a central role in a smaller sports extravaganza, the Commonwealth Games in 2002, a marvelously organized multisport event the city warmed to.
For Manchester itself is a warmhearted city and a proud one, a community rooted in sports and music simply because that is from where so much of its worldwide fame has come.
We talk of it now in different terms, with sympathy and compassion, because of the events at a site that should have been reserved for athletic feats and stirring symphonies, not as an instrument for harm.