‘I haven’t seen any blood yet, so I guess it’s OK.’

Ballroom boxing came to the Valley last week. It was elegant and fun, at one point even cute. But in the end it still drew blood. The idea behind this trend in the most basic of sports is to create an elegant enough setting to attract young and status-conscious people who might otherwise never go to see two men thrashing each other.

Taking his lead from the recent success of such events at several Orange County hotels, a promoter named Harry Kabakoff rented the Grand Ballroom of the Sheraton Universal Hotel on Friday and set up a boxing ring surrounded by more than 70 tables with peach-covered tablecloths where the crowd would be offered a nice dinner before the fight.

But the debut of “yuppie boxing,” as the genre has been called, was hardly a complete success.

Only about 400 spectators arrived, leaving a third of the tables empty.

A celebrity crowd that the promoters had gushingly hinted at only partly materialized. Actor Telly Savalas, whose imminent appearance was rumored by almost everyone, didn’t show.

And at best it was only a partly yuppie crowd, mixed in with more traditional fight fans wearing satin jackets, garish evening dresses and barrio street clothes. Many of the tables seemed to be occupied by the friends and families of the hometown favorite, Erick (The Sylmar Slasher) Madrid in the main event.

Their evening turned out badly. The Slasher got TKO’d after suffering a blood-gushing broken nose at the hands of a stand-in from San Jose.

In spite of all that, the event managed a glitzy, infectious sort of appeal, especially for the out-of-town guests of the Universal City hotel.

The notion of boxing in a high-class hotel came as a complete surprise to the Rammers of Long Island and to the Lews from New Jersey, two families staying in the hotel on their vacation. They liked it. Cameras and autograph books ready, they stationed themselves at the front of a gawking crowd outside the ballroom doors and waited for a glimpse of any celebrity who might walk in.

They were easy to please.

Elaine Rammer, a slender preteen, gleamed over the autograph of Doc Severinsen, band leader on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

“He’s on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ isn’t he?” she asked.

Pam and Jim Schultz, tourists from Wisconsin, even bought tickets and went in. They liked it better than the Universal Studios tour. “This is much more exciting,” Pam Schultz said.

The spectators, many drinking Korbel champagne or imported beer, grew festive as a series of young men dispatched their opponents with quick flurries of punches.

Midway through the undistinguished preliminaries, a 5-year-old beauty queen temporarily stole the show. She was Brandi Anthony, an Oklahoma contestant in the weekend Charisma Girl beauty pageant at the hotel.

Brandi was sitting with her parents in the hall wearing a crisply petticoated white dress bursting with red-edged white lace ruffles when a tuxedo-clad fight official spotted her.

He talked to her for a minute, asked for her autograph and then led her into the ballroom. There he introduced her to Miss Ringside, Sandy Lee, whose job is to look sexy while carrying a large card around the ring between rounds.

Miss Ringside bent over in her pink sequin-and-bead gown and put a kiss on Brandi’s cheek. Brandi curtsied and rolled her eyes in a mock swoon, oblivious to two men who were punching each other just behind her.

Between rounds, Miss Ringside, who had changed into bosom-exposing tights, led Brandi by the hand into the ring. The Oklahoma charm queen walked a dainty circle, a keen look of pleasure on her face. The crowd whistled and cheered.

Brandi then snuggled onto the lap of Gretchen Brockert, a young Northridge woman who was sitting at ringside. Brockert found that Brandi’s photo album offered a pleasant respite from the fight, her first.

“I haven’t seen any blood yet, so I guess it’s OK,” Brockert said equivocally.

The blood was yet to come.

When it did, it was a shock to the fans of Madrid, The Slasher, a young man with 22 wins in 23 previous fights.

Before the opening bell, Madrid put one knee to the ring and crossed himself in a gesture that turned out to be prophetic. His opponent, Neri Reyes, had been called in when the scheduled boxer was captured by the U.S. Border Patrol on his way to Los Angeles. Madrid and Reyes had fought twice and split.

This time, from the first bell, Reyes pounded The Slasher’s face. In the second round a punch shattered The Slasher’s nose. A stream of blood shot to the canvas and splattered the referee’s white shirt.

The Slasher fought painfully to the bell. He survived only one more round.

By that time, much of the crowd had been swayed by the fierceness of the underdog and cheered Reyes wildly with each punch.

The referee stopped it early in the fourth.

The ballroom emptied quickly. Some of Madrid’s fans were in tears.

But two brightly dressed young Valley women named Kelli Martin and Julie Baker liked what they had seen.

“I think it’s great,” said Miller, a Burbank production manager, of her first fight.

“It was sort of like brazen and full of tension and anger,” Baker said as they strolled out.