If Boxing Just Goes Away, It’s All Right With Him

Celebrated the 32nd wedding anniversary Thursday.

I was in Vegas, and the wife was home and working so there would be something in the checking account later in the day if needed. I’ll tell you, it was an anniversary worth remembering because I didn’t need to go to the ATM.

I was thoughtful, of course. I left a card on the kitchen counter despite rushing to catch an early-morning flight. It’s the little sacrifices that make a marriage work. I also called later in the day. Even took the time to leave a “Happy Anniversary” message on the answering machine and told her not to bother calling back. No reason she should get off the couch.

I also took off her hands for the weekend the daughter who can’t get a date and who is still living at home. The daughter likes Oscar De La Hoya. I haven’t had the heart yet to tell her he’s married.

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NOW I hate the bloody, barbaric sport of boxing, and usually when someone mentions that so-and-so is fighting so-and-so, it gets the same blank look from me that someone gets when they mention the name of two hockey players.

But this is big-time boxing. It’s Oscar De La Hoya against so-and-so.

(They’ve tried to get me interested in this so-and-so that De La Hoya is going to fight, telling me he has a really interesting story to tell about his five years in prison and the eight felonies on his resume, but that doesn’t seem to make him any different than most fighters.)

Like everyone else, though, I’ve been drawn to the De La Hoya charisma. Not enough to watch that dumb reality TV show, but when you interview as many drips as I do -- Jeff Weaver and Garret Anderson come to mind -- it’s a treat to be around someone with a little pizazz.

The prevailing opinion around here, of course, is that De La Hoya is going to get pounded Saturday. Robert Walker, the smart guy who sets the odds for many of the casinos here, including the MGM Grand where the fight will be held, said he expects to take in several six-figure wagers, “but none on De La Hoya.”

De La Hoya is a 2-1 underdog in Las Vegas, 5-1 and 6-1, Walker said, in some off-shore betting operations that cater to hard-core gamblers who aren’t swayed by De La Hoya’s popularity.

The professional gamblers, Walker said, are putting their money on the guy who went to prison, trained with a convicted murderer and who can now earn as much as $15 million for legally beating someone up. Is this a great country, or what?

“But I don’t know if there’s ever been a dog more live than De La Hoya,” Walker said, and spending time with the Dodgers as I have, I’m pretty familiar with dogs, but Walker said I misunderstood.

He said the public loves De La Hoya, and while the experts have made him an underdog against the jailbird, the Las Vegas bookmakers expect most of the money in the next two days to come in on the Golden Boy.

“There’s no more public fighters out there other than Oscar, and every $5 and $10 bettor is going to want to bet on him, especially now that he’s an underdog,” Walker said.

Ordinarily the casinos pull for the underdog, knowing the public likes to bet the favorites in football, basketball and baseball. A few years ago Walker took a $4.8-million wager on the Rams in the Super Bowl, and both the Patriots and the casino won. (Wouldn’t it be sweet if it had been Georgia Frontiere who had made that bet?)

In boxing, the public usually bets on the underdog. The casinos took a “seven-figure loss,” Walker said, on the first Mike Tyson-Evander Holyfield fight, and now with De La Hoya an underdog for the first time in his career and drawing so much interest, the casinos will be pulling hard for so-and-so.

And so will I.

I’m not betting on the fight, but I’m wagering that the jailbird makes a businessman out of De La Hoya once and for all, finishing both him and this silly sport of boxing for a while.

As Walker noted, that’s some of the allure surrounding this fight: “There’s nothing on the horizon to interest the public when it comes to boxing.” Take away the Golden Boy, and who is going to convince the casual sports fan to organize a pay-per-view party to catch the jailbird in action once again?

Who else catches the fancy of the sporting world at large? Who else has the ability to draw so much interest from a female audience?

If the Golden Boy disappears as a fighter, boxing doesn’t offer much beyond the Klitschko brothers, one of them a weak-chinned loser and the other some kind of WB-something-or-other champ in a heavyweight division loaded only with chumps.

So here’s hoping the jailbird wipes the canvas with the Golden Boy and, at least for a while, boxing goes the way of the NHL.

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THE MGM Grand sports book put the odds of the San Diego Chargers winning the Super Bowl at 70-1, while making the Los Angeles Kings 25-1 to win the Stanley Cup. Right now I think I’d have to go with the Chargers.

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TODAY’S LAST word comes in e-mail from Philip Pettus:

“The price of a ticket should not entitle anyone to use profane or abusive language directed at anyone.... That idiot fireman from Oakland and his wife provoked the Ranger players. I believe that anyone who intentionally buys tickets to sit near the bullpen and heckle opposing players deserves Monday night’s outcome. It’s too bad they both didn’t get fat lips and broken noses from the airborne chair. Perhaps they will think twice before opening their yaps again.”

What do you think should be done to people who submit idiotic e-mails?

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.