‘Designer Boxing’ : Old Sport Becomes a Yuppie Fad

Sean Mannion knew the fight was over. A bloody mass of skin hung like an old tomato in the place where his right eye was supposed to be.

At ringside, Donny Osmond, the toothy pop singer whose company hopes to syndicate boxing for cable television, turned to his wife, Debra, and consoled her. Osmond was, perhaps, trying to convince her that not all boxers leave the ring with the right side of their faces hanging like yesterday’s fruit.

But the scene was not the world-famous Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. When the ring announcer proclaimed that Mannion, the seventh-ranked middle-weight contender, had won the fight on a technicality, he was speaking to an audience of upscale, young professionals in the ballroom of a roadside Marriott hotel--in Irvine.

No Smoking Ballroom

The tale inside the ring is the same old rock ‘em sock ‘em blood and gore. But the story outside the ring is something altogether new. Yuppies--from San Diego to Miami--are attending boxing matches by the BMW-full. Apparently bored with their VCRs and ATVs, yuppies are turning to boxing. Some in the industry call it “designer boxing.” Why go directly home from the office on a Monday or Thursday night when, for $25--about the price of three blank VCR tapes--you can get your car valet-parked and a comfortable ringside seat in a No Smoking ballroom to see a couple of Joes pummel each other ragged?

Although the Irvine Marriott--with six consecutive sellouts--ranks among the most successful hotels to market yuppie boxing, it is hardly alone. What is happening in Irvine, one of the nation’s wealthiest master-planned communities--with nearly a fourth of its households posting average annual incomes of at least $50,000--is spreading nationwide. More than a dozen hotels and nightclubs across the country are promoting boxing matches that are meticulously designed for young urban professionals.

Mostly No-Name Matches

These are not in the mold of big-name bouts at the Las Vegas or Atlantic City hotels, which host world championship boxing matches solely to lure high-ticket gamblers into their casinos. These are mostly no-name matches at businessmen’s hotels in predominantly upper-middle-class neighborhoods.

Hotel marketing directors have cleverly figured out how to fill up otherwise empty ballrooms--not to mention cocktail lounges and restaurants--on traditionally slow nights. Once-a-month live boxing is adding millions of dollars to the coffers of a growing number of hotels. And it is adding some luster to a sport with a black eye.

“Boxing has finally moved into the suburbs, and it has found a real home here,” said Christopher Coats, West Coast correspondent of Ring Magazine, the 63-year-old publication often referred to as the bible of boxing.

At recent boxing matches at the Fontainebleu Hilton in Miami, yuppies from the Fort Lauderdale area made a party of the occasion and arrived by the rented busload. Once a month at the Country Club nightclub in Reseda, upscale crowds of 1,000 or more dine on the likes of porterhouse steaks while watching live boxing. Each month at the El Cortez in San Diego, more than a dozen companies spend $250 for ringside cocktail tables carefully attended by tuxedo-decked waitresses.

At the Santa Clara Marriott in the middle of Silicon Valley, the ballroom is occasionally converted into a boxing arena, resembling the scene in Irvine where executives illegally, but openly, lay their $5 and $10 bets on the table.

This comes at a time when live boxing attendance nationally is declining slightly, primarily due to overexposure on cable television, say boxing industry writers. Recent fight nights at Madison Square Garden’s Felt Forum, for example, have failed to fill even one-fourth of the 4,200 seats. Meanwhile, yuppie boxing is attracting a brand-new, free-spending audience.

‘Marvelous Diversion’

Tony Schatzlen, a Newport Beach developer, is one such fan. He attended a recent bout at the Irvine Marriott, and between the boxing tickets, dinner and a few drinks he expected to roll up a $100-plus tab--and he plans to attend the fights monthly. “It’s a marvelous diversion,” he said.

Closely following this phenomenon is Bob Halloran, vice president of sports and special events at Caesars World Inc., which owns Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and Caesars Hotel Casino in Atlantic City. When Caesars hosted the Marvin Hagler-Thomas Hearns fight last year, it saw the gate swell to more than $6 million as ringside seats sold for up to $600. But because of high promotion costs, the hotel is happy to break even on these big-name fights, Halloran said. In fact, it has lost money on a number of them.

But yuppie boxing may prove to be a real moneymaker in its own right, Halloran said. After all, the boxers are usually paid a few hundred--or at the most, a few thousand--dollars, and the promotional fees are virtually nil. “It’s becoming the thing to do,” Halloran said. “The yuppies don’t go to see a fight, they go to see an event.” With the sudden emergence of pin-striped suits and attaches at the fights, he added, “boxing is entering a whole new stratosphere.”

There are a number of problems, however, that could quickly bring even yuppie boxing back down to earth. Foremost is the traditional image of boxing still implanted in the public’s mind: sweat, blood and beer. But the sweat and blood appear far less gaudy when the ring is smack in the middle of a chandelier-decked ballroom, as is the case in Irvine. And when the only beer sold is imported--as is also the case in Irvine, where Tecate Beer spends $15,000 annually to be the sole sponsor--so much the classier.

Hotel Suspends Program

Nevertheless, with image as a chief concern, the Marriott in Portland, Ore., has temporarily suspended its four-year-old monthly boxing program. “It became too difficult for us to educate the public that a boxing match is something other than a lot of sweaty guys in a smoke-filled room tossing glasses of beer at one another,” said Tom Chevins, the hotel’s director of marketing. “We couldn’t pinpoint it but we knew there were cases where, say, a person planning a wedding reception for his daughter decided not to hold it at a place with live boxing.”

Yet the Warner Center Marriott, scheduled to open in January in Woodland Hills, plans to host live boxing--but not until after it is operating for a year, said Jon Loeb, the hotel’s general manager. “First you have to establish an upscale reputation,” Loeb said. “After all, the key to good fights is to have them in the ring, and no where else.”

There are other problems too. “The typical promoter works by the seat of his pants,” said Don Fraser, promoter of All Star Boxing at the Irvine Marriott and former director of boxing at The Forum in Inglewood. Lack of business acumen among promoters, particularly in areas of advertising and marketing, could choke off the latest boxing revival as it has before.

Although yuppies, because of their financial status, are among the most desirable customers, they are notoriously fickle in their interests. Boxing may be just another passing fad, like sushi, say industry skeptics.

Most worrisome is the potential side effects of yuppie boxing, said Arnold LeUnes, a sports psychologist and associate professor of psychology at Texas A&M; University. LeUnes is a former officer-in-charge of the U.S. Armed Forces championship boxing team. “I suppose that the ballroom settings appeal to the yuppies--kind of like all this is just another toy for them to play with” he said. “But boxing appeals to the most base instincts of people.”

Permit Costs $400

Still, some hotel executives claim that yuppie boxing is the greatest thing to fill ballrooms since bar mitzvahs. “It’s a grand alternative to having a dark ballroom on a Monday night,” said Ed Proenza, director of marketing at the Irvine Marriott. Proenza introduced the same upscale boxing program to the Portland Marriott when he was marketing director there three years ago.

A simple one-page form and $400 is enough to get a boxing permit in California. Sponsors are required to guarantee that fighters are insured and that a doctor will be at ringside.

At the Irvine Marriott, All Star Boxing has virtually sold out the house since it was introduced six months ago, Fraser said. A full house brings in revenues of about $35,000, which goes directly to the promoter, but it can cost up to $20,000 to put on the event, said Roy Englebrecht, marketing director of All Star Boxing. There are all kinds of expenses, such as the $400 to rent a boxing ring and another $220 to rent the boxing gloves.

Two scantily clad “ring girls” receive $75 each to march around the ring between rounds with placards announcing the next round’s number. But the biggest expense is transportation costs for boxers, since many come from out of state.

Most customers, however, do not come to watch boxing. They come to be part of the happening. And to prove they have been there, they buy lots of souvenirs, such as the $90 satin jackets and $9 T-shirts (one in 10 spectators buy T-shirts) that advertise All Star Boxing. And they eat and drink before the match, then eat and drink some more afterward. On boxing nights, the hotel’s food and drink concessions commonly exceed $15,000.

But promoters have figured out yet more ways to cash in. Beginning in January, four-color All Star boxing programs will be handed out free of charge to all fans and hotel guests. Advertisers will pay $600 for full-page color ads in the program.

Osmond Seeks Cable Rights

So hot a property is yuppie boxing that even Donny Osmond, who moved to Irvine earlier this year, is on the verge of throwing his hat in the ring. It might seem incompatible for the squeaky clean pop singer, who is a Mormon, to associate himself with boxing. But his company, Donny Osmond Entertainment Corp., is now negotiating for the rights to syndicate the matches for cable television.

“It’s a bottom-line decision,” said Osmond, the 27-year-old brother of Marie, after a recent fight at the Marriott, which was mercifully halted by the ring doctor.

“I’m not a real boxing fan, but I enjoy the excitement. Besides, we think there’s a niche in the market for this kind of thing.” Earlier, Osmond turned a bright shade of scarlet when he was greeted with a resounding chorus of boos by boxing fans who clearly view him as a lightweight.

Of course, a number of well-known celebrities have preceded Osmond into the boxing arena. One of the more popular, Sylvester Stallone of “Rocky” and “Rambo” fame, is now negotiating to promote yuppie-type boxing in the Philadelphia area, said Russell Peltz, director of boxing for Stallone’s Philadelphia-based company, Tiger Eye Promotions.

Tiger Eye currently promotes monthly boxing matches at an inner-city arena in Philadelphia and sponsors occasional fights at the Sands Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City. But a possible venture into yuppie boxing would mark a new twist for the company, Peltz said. “People seem to be getting back into the habit of attending live fights,” he said. “We’re still not certain how strong a gate we can get from them (yuppies).”

While yuppie boxing does not consistently attract the big names commonly seated in the crowds at Las Vegas matches--like Ryan O’Neal, Jack Nicholson and Kirk Douglas--it has had its moments. Muhammad Ali, for example, recently waltzed unannounced into the crowd at an Irvine Marriott bout and caused far more commotion than the center ring attraction. Former heavyweight boxing champion Ken Norton, Los Angeles Ram’s football star Eric Dickerson and pop star Kenny Loggins also have been spotted at recent Irvine fights. Promoters are ecstatic when celebrities attend because it not only garners them free publicity, but adds an air of credibility to the fights, they say.

Popular in Britain

Some who attend, however, would rather not be seen at all. The president of one of Orange County’s largest health care company’s was spotted sitting ringside with senior executives at a recent bout. He explained that he was there only because the company had held its annual meeting at the hotel that day, but he repeatedly asked that his name--and his company’s name--not be mentioned. “How would it look to stockholders,” he said “for the top guy at a health care company to be attending a boxing match?”

In Great Britain, executive attendance at boxing matches at several posh sporting clubs is not only socially acceptable but virtually mandatory, said Nigel Collins, editor-in-chief at Ring Magazine. And such has been the case since before the turn of the century, he added.

The gentry has long enjoyed watching the lower class battle in the ring. Some plantation owners in the Old South took no greater pleasure than pitting slave against slave in fights that did not end until one was knocked senseless. And centuries ago, in even more brutal fashion, the Romans and Greeks placed iron spikes in the gloves of slaves before placing them in the arena to fight, often to the death.

In Irvine, the crowds tend to get most excited when the main event is a white boxer versus a black boxer, Fraser said. And with a 98% white audience, the yuppie crowd on a recent fight night clearly favored the white boxers.

But some of the boxers are appearing in their first professional fight, and at a recent bout, one heavyweight from Long Beach never showed up because his boss would not let him off early from work. The main event, however, usually pits a world-ranked boxer against a scrappy opponent. In fact, Fraser had to turn down a request by Tyrell Biggs, the 1984 Olympic heavyweight champion, to appear in an October bout. Explained Fraser, “The card was full.”

So is the Irvine Marriott, fight after fight. Tastefully full, that is. “How often can you tell 1,600 people not to smoke,” posed Jim Arvizu, the hotel’s director of security, “and every one of them listens?”