BALLROOM BRAWLS : The fans are an upscale bunch at the Irvine Marriott, where ‘nice’ is the word for Fight Night

Joey Bishop has been a fight fan for as long as he can remember. The 71-year-old comedian remembers being thrilled at the opportunity to usher at the big bouts in Philly when he was a teen-ager, and the small neighborhood gyms were churning out more quality fighters than the local halls could showcase.

He also fought as a senior welterweight in the Army and, as a young entertainer on tour, religiously sought out matches wherever he could find them.

When he did his talk show, boxers were a staple. Bishop boasts that he “fought”--at various times for various charities and varying chuckles--heavyweight champions Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali, George Foreman and Joe Frazier. He did Marciano’s eulogy and Joe Louis’ testimonial.

And now Bishop, who is retired and lives in Newport Beach, is seated ringside in the Irvine Marriott’s Grand Ballroom where, in front of a crowd of 1,140 on a recent Thursday night, boxing--Orange County style--is on display.

“I love it here. It’s a nice, family crowd, a great atmosphere for a fight,” Bishop says between bouts. “You won’t see any big names here, but it’s a good card (program) and the fights are spirited. The fans are polite and well-behaved. I never miss it.”

Neither does Margot Condon, a teacher with a doctorate in education, the mother of nine and a big fan of Johnny Taipa, an undefeated bantamweight from Albuquerque who on this night hammers out a unanimous decision.

“My husband bought me season tickets as a birthday gift last year,” says the Newport Beach resident, “and I told him, ‘Get ‘em for me again this year.’ It’s comfortable here, a nice atmosphere to see a fight.”

“Nice” seems to be the operative adjective here. There are no tuxedos or sequins in evidence, but the crowd is more upscale than the sport’s seedy reputation would lead one to expect. Smoking is limited to the corridors outside the ballroom, so the air is both breathable and see-through.

Waitresses circulate, bringing beer and cocktails to seated patrons. In two corners of the ballroom are buffets offering everything from popcorn and brownies to roast beef sandwiches and jumbo shrimp. In the other corners, bartenders dispense wine and mixed drinks at a brisk pace.

On this night, fighters now residing in Westminster, Santa Ana, Huntington Beach and other Southland cities battle each other spiritedly. Between rounds, young women wearing big smiles and microscopic bathing suits sashay through the crowd--to the accompaniment of traditional wolf whistles--with cards indicating the upcoming round number.

Although none of Bishop’s heroes has ever fought here, the Irvine Marriott boxing series has had its moments. Ali himself once showed up--typically unannounced and with entourage--to see Robert Shannon, a member of the 1984 U.S. Olympic team, in one of his early pro fights. Promoter Don Fraser--who in 1972 staged the title bout between Ali and Ken Norton--adroitly moved in a new row of seats at ringside and let Ali work his magic. The Champ leapt into the ring and shadowboxed, reprising the Ali shuffle. The crowd, of course, went nuts.

There have also been memorable bouts: Jaime Garza, a former super bantamweight champ, battled Daryl Thigpen a few years ago in a back-and-forth thriller in which each fighter went down twice before Thigpen finally stopped Garza on an eighth-round technical knockout.

Make no mistake about it: Boxing has carved out a comfortable home for itself in Orange County. The 47 shows that have been staged at the Marriott since January, 1985, typically fill the 1,250-seat arena to more than 90% of capacity. The fights are held once a month, except in December. From January through August, fight night is on Monday, filling the void left by prime-time NFL games. The rest of the year, fights are on Thursday nights. The next fights are scheduled for April 24.

Holding fights in hotel ballrooms “is a highly unusual phenomenon,” says Fraser, head of Don Fraser Promotions, which stages the fights. Fraser says he has spent his entire adult life in boxing--as publicist, promoter and official in and around Southern California. But he as “not tuned in” to Orange County, he says, and had to be persuaded by the Marriott to give it a try.

When Ed Proenza, then the marketing director at the Irvine Marriott, wanted to stage fights at the facility, he says he “had to sell it internally.”

“There was apprehension,” says Proenza, who still works for the Marriott. “They were afraid boxing wouldn’t draw the right kind of crowd. But I argued that if we didn’t allow smoking, dressed the waiters in spiffy uniforms, offered valet parking, handled the beverage and food ourselves, charged $25 a head, then it could be a first-class operation. Hey, it worked out.”

“It’s an affluent area far enough removed from Los Angeles to be a viable site,” Fraser said. “It might not work elsewhere; it hasn’t worked elsewhere. . . . Several other Marriotts have tried to stage fights: Santa Clara hasn’t caught on, and in La Jolla, they flopped totally.”

So here, among the glass skyscrapers and business parks that seem to be sprouting up at every intersection, boxing has found a home. But Fraser is hardly amassing Michael Milken-like riches. His profits for each event are in the $3,000 to $5,000 neighborhood, and he must scramble to protect even that from spiraling costs--his insurance has tripled and his rent doubled in the last year, he said.

But things could be a lot worse. “This has been profitable from the very first show,” Fraser says. “It was a sellout by the day of the fight; we had a good card, word of mouth was good, and it just sustained itself.”

Jim Luce, the hotel’s current marketing director, says the fights “keep our name out there and are a good revenue source.” Although the stay-over spinoff is minimal, Luce says that since most of the repeat customers work within 3 miles of the hotel, they come directly to the fights from work and drop appreciable dollars into the hotel coffers eating, drinking and unwinding before the show starts.

The live gate at $25 to $30 a seat (slightly less for groups) usually covers an evening’s expenses of $25,000. The profits come from the amounts kicked in by the sponsors: Tecate Beer, Allen Cadillac and Olds of Laguna Niguel and, starting last month, the Camel cigarette division of R.J. Reynolds, which overlooked the no-smoking ban in the arena and handed out gifts and free packs of cigarettes in the corridors outside.

The upscale nature of the crowd is precisely what attracted the program’s major sponsor, Tecate Beer. According to Jerry Prial, division manager of Wisdom Imports, Tecate pays $30,000 a year to sponsor the fights.

“The people who come here are our type of people: 21 to 35, upper-income, male and female,” Prial says. “This is yuppie boxing. It’s right up our alley. The identification Tecate gets from these fights is phenomenal.”

Despite what Prial says, there is no more than a yuppie veneer to the Marriott boxing crowd. Far more typical are couples like Joe and Mary Ellen Siegel of Garden Grove, regulars at the Marriott fights since the start and boxing fans from childhood.

“We used to go to the fights at the Olympic (the inner-city Los Angeles arena that hosted the Olympic matches in 1932), but it got to the point where it wasn’t safe for my wife,” Joe Siegel says. “This is a family atmosphere, and the promoters really give you a good card every time.”

“We’re not just people who buy tickets,” his lwife says. “The promoters know us, know our names. They make us feel at home.”

“This is the one night a month I look forward to,” says Tim Reaves, 38, of Costa Mesa. “It’s always exciting, always a good crowd. There are always celebrities. I like to bring friends here who say they don’t like boxing. They invariably enjoy themselves.”

Ted Bauly, a regular from Newport Beach, agrees. “The novelty of having fight nights right here in Orange County is still a draw,” he says. “It’s a little different from seeing the Rams or watching the Lakers on TV. You get out among friendly people and yell your head off.”

“We’ve been up against World Series games, Oscars, Emmys, whatever, and we draw despite that stuff,” says Roy Englebrecht, event coordinator for Don Fraser Promotions. “It’s only once a month, and if you need your boxing fix or your one night of uninhibited fun, this is it.”

The Irvine matches will never lose their small-time allure. The size of the ballroom limits the size of the purses. Fraser says he has never paid a single fighter more than $5,000 and must keep a night’s total purse to $10,000 in order to make money.

So the fighters will always be up-and-comers. And they will always be on the small side, says Fraser, since the heavier weight classes traditionally command bigger purses.

Not that this bothers devotees like Joe Siegel. “It’s especially enjoyable when you can see someone fight before he makes a name for himself,” Siegel says. “Then, after he makes it, you can tell your friends, ‘I saw him fight when he was just starting out.’ ”

Up in the ring, two kids with dreams bigger than either their reputations or their pocketbooks are trading flurries of punches as the seconds tick away in the final round of a bout that could go either way. The spectators are on their feet, stomping and screaming.

It’s Fight Night. The audience is as much into the fight here as they would be anywhere else, Joey Bishop would no doubt tell you--if he weren’t at this moment madly pounding his fists against the ringside table.