Last Call: Las Vegas Nights

...The Bull gave a pained smile and shook his head...

...The keenest chronicler of boxing in his (and my) time, Joe Liebling was an epicurean stylist much given to fine food and fight talk...

...He had come, he later said, "to box, not brawl...

...SO IT WAS THAT THE "IF" FACTOR WAS VERY MUCH the focus of speculation at La Scala on the eve of the big fight, despite a tableby-table consensus that the Golden Boy would, one way or another, add Felix Trinidad to his list of victims...

...Then followed the introduction of former champions—Leonard, Hearns, Hagler, Chavez—and film stars— Stallone, Costner, Nicholson, Crystal, Kirstie Alley in blinding platinum...

...Title IX, with a vengeance...

...Thanks to the marvel of modern-day sports marketing—pay-per-view TV, product endorsements, personal appearance fees—De La Hoya had earned no less than Sioo million in six years of professional fighting...

...THERE WAS INDEED a fight, though for a while I thought it might not come until the millennium: twelve rounds, to a split decision, won by Trinidad...

...De La Hoya seemed an exception...

...How else to account for the three national anthems preceding the Big Fight...

...It would have been surprising had he done otherwise...

...Exhibit A: To fill out the undercards for championship fights, latter-day promoters feature four-round bouts between two-fisted women who, more often than not, get louder cheers for their brawling skills than the men matched in other preliminaries...

...If he were still around to cover the manly art, La Scala would have been the place to find him on the eve of the September welterweight championship match between undefeated Oscar De La Hoya and undefeated Felix Trinidad...

...all of this preceded, understand, by an interlude with a Puerto Rican rap group and the ceremonial Las Vegas entry of the warriors (another fifteen minutes...

...The "If" question answered, I repaired, as Liebling would say, to La Scala, the better to regroup...

...But so did the original Los Angeles Golden Boy, Art Aragon, who dazzled southern California fight crowds in the 19507s, then fizzled on traveling east, out of palm and into hard elm country...

...OH YES, THE FIGHT...

...yet through this haze the Raging Bull saw a rising star—Oscar De La Hoya, the new "Golden Boy" of Los Angeles, then 22, professional fights into what promised to be a brilliant boxing career...

...Meaning, he had size, reach, foot speed, a riveting jab, a debilitating left hook, and a right hand that had ended most of his bouts before the middle rounds...

...Liebling and headed for La Scala, in the fluorescent heart of Las Vegas's MGM Grand...

...IN THE HARDSCRABBLE 1930'S AND zi.o'S, CHAMPIONS like LaMotta, Ray Robinson, and Rocky Graziano had to fight their way through fifty, sometimes a hundred opponents before they could get a title match...

...LA SCALA, A MEDITERRANEAN OASIS IN THE neon desert, is operated by Franco Nuschese, a committed fight buff who came to this country about the time Jake LaMotta, the "Raging Bull," was reinventing himself as a supper-club monologist...

...Rich beyond dreams, celebrated, his Hollywood friends holding out promise of a show-business career—who could blame a 26-year-old Mexican-American with Ricky Martin looks if, after 31 fights, he lost his edge, thinking of the sweet life beyond the ring...

...There just aren't that many opponents around...

...The big "If": Shrewd gamblers, who in the past had made De La Hoya a heavy favorite in all his fights, were this time hedging their bets...

...TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER, EN ROUTE TO THE Mandalay Bay sports arena, I would pass a huge, headless statue of Vladimir Lenin outside a restaurant called "Red Square...

...Don King...

...THERE WAS, HOWEVER, AN "IF" ATTACHED to La Motta's endorsement, the caveat old-timers invariably raise when praising Vegas-era fighters—especially Vegas-era fighters from California: Will he stay hungry...

...De La Hoya has all the tools," said the Bull...

...Franco, the old Las Vegas hand, was waiting...

...Now in his mid-seventies, LaMotta— no longer raging, but still going strong—appeared at Franco's national capital restaurant, Cafe Milano, a few years back and was asked, between robust pastas, how he compared the current run of welter- and middleweight fighters to those of his own era...

...q#:86 November 1999 • The American Spectator...

...Four words said it all: split decision...

...For a boxer with even modest talent in the 1990's, a mere dozen matches can do the job...

...Inappropriate, one would think, in a town where capitalism in its purest form is celebrated round-the-clock, but Las Vegas in the nineties has, it seems, given itself to the supra-national spirit of the times, if only as a marketing device...

...then "The Star-Spangled Banner...

...for Trinidad, from San Juan, the Puerto Rican anthem...

...Though today's baseball players are stronger and faster than their predecessors and football players bigger and more agile, boxing in the 1990's is a sport whose athletes, with few exceptions, are measurably inferior to the old-timers...

...For De La Hoya's Mexican fans, the Mexican anthem...

...For though California has produced great athletes in other sports—Joe DiMaggio, John Elway, Pete Sampras —the Golden State has never been a breeding ground for Hall of Fame prize-fighters...

...We smelled a rematch...

...Bleak prospects for a millennial fight buff...

...De La Hoya, booed for the first time in his career, took it badly...