Arum looking for a crowd of 20,000 at Cotto-Foreman bout on Saturday

By Dave Lahr: There have been conflicting reports about the ticket sales for Saturday’s bout between WBA junior middleweight champion Yuri Foreman (28-0, 8 KO’s) vs. Miguel Cotto (34-2, 27 KO’s) at Yankee Stadium, in New York. Top Rank promoter Bob Arum reported that over 12,000 tickets have been sold for the fight and he’s expecting at least 20,000 fans to be at the fight by Saturday night.

If the final number does come out to 20,000 instead of the full 50,000 that the Stadium can hold for events, this would seem like a bitter disappointment. Even if the number does make it to 20,000, it’s difficult justifying that the Cotto vs. Foreman fight should have been held at the Yankee Stadium. With those kinds of numbers, the fight would be better off being put at the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, or the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I think either of those locations would be better options if only 20,000 fans show up for the fight, because at least the fight would have an excellent chance of selling out. I seriously doubt the Cotto-Foreman fight will come anywhere close to selling out on Saturday and it might look kind of funny when the television cameras pan around the stadium and show less than half of the stadium being filled. This would seem to indicate that Arum misjudged how popular the Cotto-Foreman fight would be.

I know for me I wouldn’t want to purchase tickets for this fight and have to deal with traffic and the parking hassle. I don’t mind going to see fights, but I prefer going to fights involving well known champions, not obscure ones, and I also prefer to see challengers that are actually winning most of their fights going into the title bout. You can’t say that for Cotto. He’s lost two out of his last four fights and was stopped in his last bout.

It somehow isn’t appealing to think about seeing a fighter that was brutally stopped in twice in the past couple of years. If you weren’t aware of that, then, yeah, I can see getting sort of interested in this fight. It would still be a problem for me that Foreman isn’t all that popular and hasn’t been an exciting fighter during his career. I don’t really like to see a lot of punch and grabbing from fighters.

This is kind of how Foreman fights. Besides that, Foreman really hasn’t fought anyone during his career besides a weight drained Daniel Santos in his last fight. Foreman may be a top 6 light middleweight, but he’s not particularly popular with boxing fans outside of New York, and given that I’m not from New York, I’m not automatically falling in line goose stepping in joy about seeing this fight.

It’s an okay fight, but not one that I would want to ever buy a ticket to see. Even if I lived across the street from the Yankee Stadium, I wouldn’t bother coming to the stadium and watching the bout. It’s not exciting enough, lacks stars, doesn’t have an interesting undercard and matches Cotto, a fighter on the decline, against a non-exciting champion.

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