Boxing needs big events. And here comes one, maybe: A three-fight card made up of some of the biggest names in the game–Teofimo Lopez, Devin Haney, and headlining headcase Ryan Garcia–is scheduled for Friday, May 2, outdoors in Times Square.
The bill is intriguing enough. Garcia, who somehow remains a sympathetic figure despite being a very insistent and public asshole coming off a cheating suspension, is as compelling a character as the fight game offers these days. But the Times Square setting takes things to another level.
“Yes, right where the ball drops,” Ed Pereira tells me. “The crossroads of the world!” Pereira’s a career event planner, and has handled big-time soccer and rugby shindigs in Europe, and his firm is putting the Times Square gig together. He says the outdoor boxing bash idea came from Turki Al-Sheikh, the chairman of the Saudi General Entertainment Authority and currently the most powerful man in boxing. Turki, who has an essentially unlimited budget and a mission to bring positive attention to Saudi Arabia to make up for all the other stuff, does things big. Last year, he put on a fight in an L.A. soccer stadium with Terence Crawford, the top pound-for-pound fighter in the world, versus Israil Madrimov, a super welterweight title bout all boxing fans were excited by. But then Turki upstaged the main event by throwing in a surprise and wholly unnecessary mid-card concert by Eminem.
Similarly, the idea of putting a card in Times Square seems better on paper than in practice. Garcia is a publicity magnet who connects with younger fight fans like nobody else in the sport, yet there’s been almost zero media coverage of the fight since it was announced in February. Fans began wondering right away when tickets would be available, and they’re still waiting.
But while there has not been any official announcement about tickets, Pereira tells me there will not be any tickets to see the fights live and in person. Only folks invited by Turki will actually be allowed into the grounds where the ring is set up. Pereira said he is unsure of how many invitees there will be, though one boxing industry source put the likely live crowd at just "250 to 300" people (not counting those catching the action from upper floors of buildings near the square). The promoters will set up big screens on the Times Square grounds so non-VIPs who show up can watch the fight telecast, he said, and there's an as-yet-unrealized plan to offer free passes to standing room sections online. Everybody else can watch on pay per view, priced at $59.99 in the U.S.
Having no ticket sales seems like a bizarre financial decision. When Garcia fought Haney last year at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the reported gate was $4.3 million. Both fighters’ profiles are considerably higher now because of what went down that night, with Garcia knocking Haney down three times on the way to an upset majority-decision win. (The fight was later declared a no-contest after Garcia failed a drug test.) Ring Magazine reported ticket revenue for Gervonta Davis's controversial draw with Lamont Roach last month at Barclays was $6,415,815. The Times Square card has a lot more star power than that one.
But Pereira, who concedes that staging a boxing card in one of the most crowded and popular public spaces on the globe has brought administrative and logistical headaches he’s never encountered before, insists that a big gate was never a goal, and that the VIP-only setup was Turki’s plan all along.
“From the very get go, it was never going to be a free-for-all where people could come see the fights [in person],” says Pereira. “Security and safety were where we started. The safety of the public was paramount from the beginning. This was never meant to be a free-for-all where people could come see the fights. It was always going to be very planned, very controlled, and safe.”
Anthony Leaver, a spokesman with Matchroom, the British boxing giant that is among the promoters for the Times Square card, also told me that information about the fight has been scarce thus far because the organizers decided that “logistics around the event aren't to be revealed for security purposes.”
Sophia Askari, a staffer in the communications office of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, told Defector that nobody in the city government was prepared to answer Defector’s questions about crowd sizes and ring placement.
One veteran boxing insider, who is not personally involved in the promotion but has been privy to some of the negotiations, told me that the utter lack of information about the Times Square event is simply because nobody knows what’s going to happen.
“The fight times aren’t even set,” the insider said. “The city wants them earlier than [the promoter]. Everything is negotiated.”
“I know when they started this they were thinking about optics,” the insider said, “They were telling everybody, ‘Nobody’s ever done it [in Times Square] before!’ Well, sometimes there’s a reason nobody’s ever done it. At this point, if it wasn’t Turki, it wouldn’t even happen. But it’s going to happen.”
DAZN, the fight's exclusive broadcaster, currently lists the event's start time as "TBA."
