Ever the promoter, Bob Arum is twirling quite the tale about the Miguel Cotto-Yuri Foreman fight Saturday night at Yankee Stadium. Cotto, a Puerto Rican, has always been a huge draw with the massive Puerto Rican population in New York and New Jersey. But there's even more intrigue surrounding Foreman, an orthodox Jew, who is studying to be a Rabbi. Plus, it's the first sporting event other than baseball in the new Yankee Stadium, continuing a tradition of so many great pugilistic battles that took place in the old Yankee Stadium. Arum went back 70-plus years to draw the parallel with the great Joe Louis-Max Schmelling fight in 1938.
"It was a historical moment; it had a major effect on people around the world that was the time Adolf Hitler was expounding his theory on the master race, and so on, and it would have been a tremendous propaganda victory if Schmelling had won the fight. That fight is a watermark and will be remembered for years to come," Arum told Gareth A. Davies of the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph.
Arum then went back thousands of years in talking about the significance of Foreman fighting.
"It will be totally different. When he starts his ring walk, the Shofar [the ram’s horn] will sound. In effect, remember, this was the like the bugle call which led the Ancient Israelites into battle in the time of King David and King Solomon."
Even the prefight trip to the stadium for Foreman will be something worth watching.
"Yuri can’t begin his work until after sundown on the Sabbath, which is over at 9.16pm. We have him in a hotel on the East Upper Side [in Manhattan] so he will get a police escort to the stadium with an HBO helicopter filming it all from above, following his journey to the Yankee Stadium."
Arum said there are still tickets available for the fight; with tickets ranging $50-$400. The stadium is configured to seat about 30,000. The ring, set up in front of the rightfield bleachers and stands, will be covered by a giant canopy. There will be roughly 10,000 seats on the field.
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