By Chris Williams: I watched last Saturday night’s awful Joshua Clottey vs. Manny Pacquiao card at the Dallas Cowboy Stadium, and I got to say I personally don’t care whether there are any more fights at that stadium or any other stadium. Supposedly, this is something that is good for boxing to have fights shown in large stadiums. How is it good for me? I didn’t get anything from it. All I saw on Saturday night, while watching the fight on Pay-Per-View for $49.95, was an occasional pan of the camera to an unfilled stadium. How is that good for me?

All I saw was that the stadium wasn’t filled and that the crowd had very little to cheer for because of all the mismatches on the dreadfully overpriced card. They might as well have put this one-sided card in a small arena like the MGM Grand for all I care. What do I get out of the fight being shown in a stadium?

I can see how it would be good for the promoter staging the fight and the owner of the stadium. But how is this good for boxing? If you’re arguing more people were allowed to come see the fight because of the large stadium, then I still don’t see that as being something that’s good for me and good for boxing. Those same people could have watched the fight on PPV, and still been able to see the fight.

Being at a stadium where you had to travel many miles to get there, pay a lot of money obviously with travel and hotel expense, doesn’t seem a good deal for the average boxing fan. And when you factor in that pretty much every fight on the card was a mismatch on paper going into the fight, it doesn’t seem like a good deal at all. How is it good for me to have fights shown at a stadium?

I just don’t see how this is something that gives me anything. I just want to watch boxing, and good boxing, not mismatches going into fights. Whether the fight is in a stadium are a barn, I don’t care. It doesn’t do anything for me. I think it would be good for boxing fans if the promoter of the fight had lowered the price of the PPV because he was making more money with the stadium.

Then I would be happy about a fight taking place in a stadium, but other than that, why should I care? I’m not going to live vicariously through the promoter, in this case Bob Arum, and be happy for his success in selling 50,000 seats for this mismatch between Clottey and Pacquiao.

Arum did well, but that didn’t do anything for me. I don’t care if they show any more fights in stadiums because there’s nothing that I’m getting out of it unless they want to start lowering the price of the PPV. Other than that, I don’t give a fig whether the fight is shown in a stadium or not. For a stadium that had 50,000 people in it, the Dallas Cowboy Stadium was deathly quiet for the entire care last Saturday night.

I wonder if that had anything to do with all the mismatches. For me, I think this would have made a halfway decent ESPN 2 card, but not one that you actually have to pay for.