Lampley KOd by Hip Woes

The first casualty on a night of head butts and swollen eyes and bloodied boxing rings at Staples Center Saturday was a member of the media, longtime boxing broadcaster Jim Lampley.

Lampley, preparing to do the blow-by-blow account for TVKO of the three title fights on the card, suffered a hip dislocation when he stood after finishing a meal. A month ago, Lampley had his hip replaced for a second time.

“He was getting up from dinner about 4:30 and he heard a pop,” broadcast partner Larry Merchant said. “He said, ‘I dislocated my hip.’ ”

Merchant said doctors were on the scene in minutes and Lampley was taken to a hospital.

“He was in a great deal of pain,” Merchant said.

Merchant said Lampley had missed one telecast because of his recent re-replacement surgery. His replacement then was Fran Charles, who also filled in Saturday at Staples.

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Top Rank did a tremendous job of selling the fight card, and an attendance at Staples just 291 shy of a sellout proved that. Despite lacking the name recognition of an Oscar De La Hoya or the local appeal of a Shane Mosley or Fernando Vargas, Bob Arum and his sales force sold 20,409 tickets for an arena that will seat 20,700, including boxes, for the fights.

And all this for an enigmatic fighter, Pensacola, Fla., light-heavyweight champion Roy Jones Jr., fighting Huntington Beach’s Julio Gonzalez, a battler with lots of heart and determination but no marquee value whatsoever.

Of course, Arum was banking on the growing appeal of Erik Morales of Tijuana in the semi-main event, a 12-round WBC featherweight title fight that turned into a compelling brawl with a cocky South Korean named Injin Chi.

Still, this show was so far from Leonard-Hearns or De La Hoya-Trinidad or Ali-Anybody that it was laughable. But Arum put it on, and they came.

“We want to hold two fights a year at Staples,” Arum said. “What we have found out is that summer is a good time to hold an event here. That’s a lousy time to do it in Las Vegas. Who wants to go there in the summer? But here, it seems to work.”

Arum’s first fight at Staples was De La Hoya-Mosley, last June. The purse and the total house receipts were larger in that one because Arum could charge more for tickets with those names. But that show also fell 2,000 short of a sellout, meaning Saturday’s show was larger in attendance by 1,709.