This Ring Is Anything but Ornate, Yet All Eyes Will Be on It Anyway
Floyd Mayweather Jr. will fight Manny Pacquiao in a heap of disparate parts stacked on two carts, occupying a space about the size of a parking spot. Stripped of its significance, dismantled of its identity, the ring looks like spare parts from an abandoned project, maybe leftover pieces of scaffolding.
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It is called a ring, even though it is square, and on Saturday night, it will be a center of attention when Floyd Mayweather Jr. fights Manny Pacquiao.
A boxing ring is the most intimate of sporting venues, a 20-foot-by-20-foot elevated square, framed by thick bands and topped by canvas, with none of the vastness of a football field or loose dimensions of a baseball park.
Yet it is afforded none of the same reverence.
A couple of weeks ago, Jay Cline walked out of the MGM Grand Garden Arena, where he is the operations director, into the bright daylight. He crossed an alley and entered the ground floor of a parking garage.
"This is it," he said, pointing to a heap of disparate parts stacked on two carts, occupying a space about the size of a parking spot. It was the ring that would contain one of the biggest fights in boxing history.
Stripped of its significance, dismantled of its identity, the ring looked like spare parts from an abandoned project, maybe leftover pieces of scaffolding. Not long before, workers had dug into the pile to make sure all the pieces were there. They were.
There were four steel corner posts (one red, one blue and two "neutral" white), 32 support beams, 36 sheets of 4-foot-by-8-foot plywood, 10 5-foot-by-12-foot foam mats (about an inch thick), four ropes (each more than 80 feet long), 16 turnbuckles (four for each corner) and various pads and covers.
There were no bolts (like those of a puzzle, the pieces connect with tongue-and-groove simplicity) and no springs (the bounciness of a ring is a product of wide swaths of plywood and padding).
There was, however, a canvas, fringed with laces and decorated with the MGM Grand logo. Long gone are the days of fighting on a blank canvas, like the one upon which Muhammad Ali stood over a fallen Sonny Liston.
But this canvas will be replaced Saturday night by one specially made to promote the fight's sponsors. Led by the beer maker Tecate, they combined to pay at least $12 million for the right to put their logo where, with luck, one of the fighters will fall and be photographed.
"We'll put ours over the real one for a while on fight day so people don't get footprints all over it," Cline said.
A boxing ring is a rather simple thing, not much more difficult to assemble than Ikea furniture. The MGM Grand bought its ring in 2010 from Everlast for about $5,000, Cline said. The previous ring was retired, without ceremony, despite hosting dozens of memorable fights, including the one in which Mike Tyson bit off a piece of Evander Holyfield's ear.
The Mayweather-Pacquiao fight will be the 20th main event in this ring. The first, on Nov. 6, 2010, was a featherweight championship bout between Juan Manuel Lopez and Rafael Marquez. Eleven of the past 15 have featured either Mayweather (six times) or Pacquiao (five).
When Pacquiao dropped face-first to the mat, knocked unconscious by a punch from Juan Manuel Marquez in 2012? Same ring. Different canvas.
For Mayweather, it will be his 11th straight fight, and 14th over all, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, a short drive from his home. (Pacquiao, who trains in Los Angeles, will make his 12th appearance at the arena.) But Mayweather does not believe in a home-ring advantage.
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"When a fighter fights, they're on an even playing field," Mayweather said. "A ring is a ring, no matter where they fight at. A ring is a ring."
The Nevada Athletic Commission tries to make sure of it. Its Provision 467.442, titled "requirements for boxing or kickboxing ring," details the specifications.
Among them: The ring must be at least 20-feet square within the ropes, with at least 18 inches of "apron" beyond the ropes (the MGM ring is 24-by-24 total, with a two-foot apron); the floor of the ring cannot be more than five feet above the floor of the arena (MGM's stands 40 inches tall); and the ring must have four ropes, each at least an inch thick and covered in soft material, with the bottom rope 18 inches above the canvas.
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On the day of the fight, officials will examine the ring, checking for an uneven surface in the floor, looking for wrinkles in the canvas, bouncing against the ropes. There are no specific guidelines for rope tension, just an interest in keeping the fighters from falling through.
"If you have heavyweights fighting, you want the ropes a little tighter," said Bob Bennett, the commission's executive director.
The ropes are tightened or loosened by the turnbuckles. These days, vertical spacers not only keep the ropes from separating too much, they provide yet another spot for sponsorship.
One of Bennett's prefight concerns is the weight that the ring can support, given the hype and pomp that this bout has generated and the entourages of the parties involved.
Everlast told him that the MGM Grand Garden Arena ring can hold up to 10,000 pounds. To Bennett, that means 50 people weighing an average of 200 pounds, minus the weight of camera and production equipment. Not much.
But it serves as a reminder that in boxing, more than most sports, the venue is temporary, an afterthought to the event presented on it. There is no nostalgia or admiration for it, no recollection of one ring over another, especially when compared with the countless places in sports where the setting is granted at least as much significance as its latest event - Yankee Stadium, the Rose Bowl, Augusta National and Churchill Downs among them.
A ring, even this ring, is just steel, plywood and padding, less a field of play than a theatrical stage.
"They're all basically the same," Bennett said.
In a matter of a couple of hours on Monday, about 10 workers turned those puzzle pieces from the parking garage into the setting for Mayweather vs. Pacquiao.
Under the dim lights of an otherwise empty arena, in the center of the floor and surrounded by silence, it looked small and insignificant.
Come Saturday night, however, the ring will be surrounded by nearly 17,000 people, illuminated from above by an enormous structure of colored lights, and observed by millions of fight fans around the world. Cameras and eyes will focus on the ring.
And, shortly after the fight ends and the arena empties, the ring will be deconstructed and returned to its place, stowed away in the garage until next time.
© 2014, The New York Times News Service