GROUND ZERO

This city, always on sensory overload, came close to blowing a fuse this time. The city that has seen so much wasn’t quite sure it had seen anything quite like this before.

In the shocking end, Oscar De La Hoya, the Golden Boy of boxing, was stunned by Felix Trinidad, the Pride of Puerto Rico, here Saturday night in a fight that determined the unified welterweight champion of the world. Before it all started, Promoters Bob Arum, a bombastic salesman, and Don King, who makes Arum look like a wallflower, presented this one to the public as “The Fight of The Millennium.” With Arum and King, of course, hyperbole is life.

While it turned out to be far from the fight of the millennium--Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano and Gene Tunney are kicking out the sides of their caskets this very moment at that hype and Muhammad Ali is not all that happy, either--this was an event to behold, in a city that knows better than any how to behold one. Even the cab drivers were calling this special, and they weren’t necessarily using that word in an affectionate manner. They love a mega-computer convention and a traffic-free Strip. This was neither.

The incredible buildup, which has been like a simmering volcano since midweek, erupted about mid-afternoon Saturday. Las Vegas was no longer merely a red-hot tourist place. It was wall-to-wall humanity.

One example was the cab line at this city’s newest attraction, Paris Las Vegas Hotel and Casino. It was a co-host of the event, but it is also perhaps a mile and a half away from the fight site, the Mandalay Bay Events Center. At Paris, starting as early as 4 p.m., more than four hours before the fight, as many as 150 people were standing in line at one time for a taxi. Eventually, waiters from Paris brought out small bottles of water for the people waiting as long as 45 minutes in the heat of the afternoon.

The Strip was near gridlock by 4:30, and the cab drivers were predicting New Year’s Eve-like crowding by midnight.

At Mandalay Bay, the wide hallways leading to the event were packed for hundreds of yards with gawkers and ticket scalpers and broadcast media interviewing each other. Men stood shoulder to shoulder with large chunks of cash in their fists, weighing all options. Ringside seats were $1,500, and figures of $7,000 and $8,000 flew around freely. People with official business had to fight their way through the throng, many protectively clutching the laminated credentials that hung around their necks.

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The fact that De La Hoya and Trinidad were both unbeaten and among the best welterweights ever was just a nice starting point for everything else that competed for center stage here this week. The scene could have aptly been named after one of this city’s most popular slot machines: Chaos.

Everybody wanted a ticket, and there were none to be had.

The big casinos bought them out in advance for their big gamblers. But the cell phones never stopped ringing all week here. Hope sprung eternal. Scalpers were scalping other scalpers, and getting scalped themselves in the process.

Rick Price of Buena Park and his girlfriend, Lorrie Burgardt of Newport Beach, got their tickets the traditional, tried-and-true Las Vegas way: by being high-rollers.

“I got a call about a month and a half ago from my casino host at the Hilton,” Price said. “She wanted me to come to the fight, and she said she’d comp the room and meals and get me fight tickets. She just wanted me here for the weekend, playing.”

And play Price does. He said a fairly average outing for him at the blackjack table might involve $5,000-a-hand bets and perhaps as much as $250,000 moving around at his table on a given night.

The casinos love people like Price, who said he recently sold his business and is retired now. “I used to be his secretary,” Burgardt said. “I’m retired now, too.”

Of course, if you couldn’t afford the kind of gambling habit Price has, you could still get a ticket--if you were somebody or knew somebody. Arum said that even the biggest celebrities paid, meaning everybody from Leonardo DiCaprio to Sugar Ray Leonard, from Chris Rock to Oliver Stone. Pete Sampras, with a little time on his hands recently, called early for his tickets. Andre Agassi, a bit busier, called earlier this week.

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Tuesday night, De La Hoya did his traditional fight week appearance on “The Tonight Show,” then flew here, where the Mandalay Bay staff put on a giant greeting party at the entrance to the hotel. There were songs and bright lights and mariachi bands and hundreds of well-wishers, welcoming him to his fight headquarters. Then, when it ended, De La Hoya left to stay in a private residence, away from the madding crowds.

They held the traditional Wednesday news conference with both fighters, and the usual testosterone flew around the dais. Whenever King got up to speak, Arum, down the row at the same dais, picked up a magazine and pretended to read it. He and King are mortal enemies, but they are putting on this fight together. It wouldn’t happen in the real world, but this isn’t. This is boxing.

Another Arum rival, Dan Goossen, called a news conference in midweek and trotted out old Mike Tyson, making yet another comeback from yet another jail term. Tyson will fight here in November, but Arum was furious that Goossen cashed in on the spotlight created by the De La Hoya fight. Arum vowed never to do business again with Goossen, prompting one veteran Vegas fight official to remark that that was only the 10th time Arum had taken such a vow about Goossen.

In his news conference, Tyson called the assembled group of sportswriters and broadcast reporters a bunch of “pedophiles, perverts, frauds and horrible fathers” and added that they were also “dysfunctional alcoholics.” That latter charge was more than Ed Schuyler, veteran boxing writer for the Associated Press, could take. “I am not dysfunctional,” Schuyler said.

King challenged Arum to a $1-million bet on the fight, and Arum turned him down, saying such a wager would not be ethical. That had reporters searching the record books back into the 1940s in an attempt to ascertain when the last time had been that a boxing promoter had actually used the word “ethical.”

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Soon, the sideshows had sideshows.

The pressroom was invaded by Playboy bunnies, handing out posters of undercard fighter Mia St. John, whose pugilistic physique will adorn the cover of the November issue of Playboy magazine, an issue that will be out in about two weeks.

St. John is the Canoga Park mother of two, whose 13-0 record after Saturday’s win against Kelley Downey included two victories over the same women, who simply changed her name for the second fight. In a pre-fight interview Friday, St. John said that she didn’t want the Playboy exposure, which includes 11 pages of pictorial in addition to the cover, to detract from her skills as a boxer.

“I had photo approval rights,” she said. “It is all very tasteful.”

St. John, interviewed by Channel 2’s Jim Hill overlooking Mandalay Bay’s wave pool and set to go on “Good Morning America” on Monday morning after her victory, had to deal with a steady stream of questioning from a long line of hard-working, dedicated reporters. Among the controversies she had to diffuse was the one created when the New York Post, the graffiti of serious journalism, ran her picture and said in a caption that many boxing fans were concerned about the possibility of exploding breast implants during her fight.

“The doctors check those things,” St. John said, completely straight-faced.

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By the time the real weigh-in was held, at 6 p.m. Friday, thousands of people had been in the arena since 11:30, waiting for a glimpse of De La Hoya and Trinidad. With the ticket situation like it was, it would probably be their only glimpse outside a big screen somewhere.

When De La Hoya and Trinidad made their way to the stage, an estimated 6,000 people were on hand. The only official business was to be two men standing on a scale in their underwear, but the scene was chaos times 20. Arum announced that both had weighed 147 pounds, but nobody could hear him.

Jim Lampley, veteran boxing broadcaster, surveyed the madhouse scene, nodded and said, “Yup, this sport is dead.”

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In the end, under a hail of confetti and surrounded by a stunned packed house, Trinidad celebrated in the ring and pointed to, of all people in the crowd, Julio Cesar Chavez, a punched-out fighter who would not be all that great an opponent. Julio, obviously, pointed back, visions of yet one more unwarranted payday dancing in his head.

The obvious future should be a De La Hoya rematch. Most people felt that he left a lot in the ring, so the match would be highly popular.

Little is certain, of course, except one thing. Las Vegas needs a rest, this time a fairly long one.