The MGM Grand Garden Arena during a boxing fight. Screengrab from MGM Grand’s website.
There can only be one venue so grand that it can match up to the glory of a fight befitting boxing’s supernovas.
On May 2, this generation’s gods of boxing, Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr., will be in the middle of the grandiose MGM Grand Garden Arena.
Las Vegas is known as the City of Sin, but on May 2, Vegas will be the known as the site where gods decided to descend and show to the world the boxing match that the whole world has been waiting for.
Come to think of it, why the MGM Grand Garden Arena?
Of the multiple sports arenas and casinos in the Las Vegas Strip, only the MGM Grand Garden Arena has the power to house such fight.
MGM Grand Garden Arena, according to its website, can seat 16,800 paying patrons.
It doesn’t hurt that Pacquiao and Mayweather have fought a combined 24 times in their professional career at the iconic arena, and where else to put boxing’s biggest bout but in the Fight Capital of the World.
Mayweather fought as an amateur in MGM when he was only 17-years-old in 1994 in a tournament between boxers from the United States and Mexico. He lost to Martin Castillo.
Meanwhile, Pacquiao’s first fight in the US was in the MGM Grand where he annihilated South African Lehlohonolo Ledwaba in six rounds to take home the International Boxing Council Super Bantamweight Title in 2001.
Looking at the two boxer’s records in the arena, Mayweather is the hands-down winner with a 13-0-0 (win-loss-draw) record while Pacquiao pales with a record of 7-3-1.
Pacquiao’s three losses are from Erik Morales, who snapped his 15-fight unbeaten streak, Timothy Bradley, who one via split decision, and Juan Manuel Marquez, who knocked him out cold in the sixth round.
It also wouldn’t hurt that Top Rank CEO Bob Arum and Mayweather are natives of Las Vegas. Pacquiao may not be a native Las Vegan, but hey was in Las Vegas where he made history.
“I am always proud to fight for the great city of Las Vegas,” Mayweather said during the pre-fight conference.
“I would have been put in a terrible position to have moved, or tried to have moved, this fight out of Las Vegas,” Arum quipped.