Tucked inconspicuously into a strip mall at the back of Chinatown (4020 Schiff Drive) is Mayweather boxing club. Yelp.com was no help at all in terms of clarifying the admission, with several people saying they walked right in, others saying they were barred or that the gym was closed when they visited, and several more being on the wrong end of arguments with Mayweather’s suffer-no-fools uncle, Roger (who, as an aside and many moons ago, was a neighbor of Anthony Curtis', in a none-too-salubrious apartment complex west of the Strip, but we digress...) We called the gym a couple of times for a clarification of the policy on casual visitors but no one was picking up the phone. On the official Web page, it says "The facility is not open to the general public," and we don't feel that this is an establishment whose security we want to mess with.
One way to be sure of admission, however, is to book the Vegas Fight Tour. It's pricey ($129) but you get driven by bus to four different gyms, including Mayweather's. It's a popular ticket: Virtually every date is September is sold out. The three-hour tour also takes you to Xtreme Couture (founded by Randy You-Know-Who), Wand Fight Club Team Gym, where everything from wrestling to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu are taught, and Johnny Tocco’s Boxing Gym, which puts on free displays of the sweet science during every First Friday downtown festival.
To keep tabs on the next match in Vegas, surf to BoxingInLasVegas.com, which lists (at present), 11 cards at a variety of casino-hotels, ranging from downtown's The D to boxing central, MGM Grand. The site is remarkably thorough in its coverage of all things boxing, so we think you can put your trust in its "Upcoming Events" page.
Site Editor Butch Gottlieb says, "Everything on the Upcoming Fights page is taken directly from the [Nevada Southern Athletic Commission] website. I do not list amateur fights and to be quite honest, I stopped listing the Guilty Boxing [promoter] cards because of their numerous cancellations. Readers were writing me and complaining about false listings. I told them when the commission tells me that a card is a go, I will list it."
The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas has been a regular venue for pugilism for four years running. Mostly recently, it hosted "The MetroPCS Friday Night Knockout" on truTV last August 17. The Palms held "Premier Boxing Champions" at The Pearl on July 25 and every year, in June, Zappos.com’s parking lot is the site for "Vegas Nightlife Fights." This charity event features a card of 15 three-round fights by local amateurs from the casino/nightlife industry, including notorious Vegas "superhost" Steve Cyr (of Whale Hunt in the Desert fame).
And expect bigger things from the downtown boxing scene: Derek Stevens, co-owner of the D and Golden Gate, is also the entrepreneur behind the Downtown Events Center, in which he hopes to revive the kind of outdoor boxing events that he used to enjoy as a tourist back in the '80s and '90s at Caesars Palace. The venue has already hosted two cards, the most recent in conjunction with Don King and televised on Showtime, and both parties hope it's just the beginning. Said Stevens in a recent interview with the R-J, "We're committed to this long term. We're going to do a lot of fights here," while King was equally enthusiastic, expressing his hope that they'd be collaborating again in 2016, if not sooner. With tickets for the last card priced at just $39, this could bring a new form of affordable entertainment to the downtown scene that to-date has surpassed even Stevens' expectations in popularity.
That said, attendance at boxing events in Nevada just got a little more expensive, now that the Legislature has increased the tax on boxing matches to 8 percent. The argument in favor of the fee increase was that this would make the commission organizationally self-sufficient, with a governor-appointed head, while allowing for expanded pre-fight drug testing (an evident dig at the UFC for some recent high-profile positive post-fight results).
