The extravagance. The skill. The hardscrabble stories that lead to iconic wins and heartbreaking losses. If there’s a sport that encapsulates Las Vegas more than boxing, you’d have to look hard to find it.
Las Vegas has been the Fight Capital of the World for generations, since the days of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. Yet in 2025, boxing is no longer the only game in town. Vegas is now home to big-league basketball, football, hockey, and (soon) baseball teams, as well as the UFC headquarters. So what does this recent athletic infusion mean for the future of Vegas’ OG sport?
While pay-per-view and large title fights seem to still favor Vegas (Exhibit A: the September 13 Canelo Álvarez vs. Terence Crawford fight at Allegiant Stadium, which raked in a reported $47 million in ticket sales from more than 70,000 attendees), experts agree this might not always be the case. Especially considering the neglect shown to amateur fights.
“There are so many things you can do in Vegas now,” says Bruce Trampler, a two-time Hall of Fame promoter who moved to Nevada in the mid-1980s to continue working with Vegas-based Top Rank. “And so for the amateurs, specifically, you’d usually be relying on locals (to attend fights) — and the locals have more to do.”
This wasn’t always the case. As Trampler recounts, Nevada’s boxing scene has always been dependent on small fighters, even dating back to its beginning in 1897, when the state became the first in the U.S. to legalize professional prizefighting.
Originally brought to the mining towns of Northern Nevada, the sport gradually moved south as settlement of the state expanded into places like Goldfield — home to the 1906 Joe Gans vs. Oscar Nelson bout, which reportedly drew a crowd of over 6,000, lasted 42 rounds, and was dubbed the “Fight of the Century.”
That matchup wouldn’t hold the moniker for very long — and especially not for the rest of the century. Moving farther south, boxing set up an unofficial home base in Las Vegas, and grew alongside the little railroad town before exploding in the 1950s and ’60s.
“The hotels were bigger, and they needed to bring in bigger gamblers and players, who would not only go to the fights, but … also hit the tables,” Trampler says. “They would use the restaurants. They would go see other shows in town that week, and so boxing is one of the reasons Las Vegas is a tourist attraction.”
Today, Vegas is primarily reliant on the big names, and there aren’t as many of those, either, owing at least partially to the shakeups in Olympic boxing: Although the International Olympic Committee added a weight class for women boxers to compete in during the 2028 Games, it reduced by one the number of weight classes for men before 2024. That means boxers planning to compete in L.A. must either lose weight, or gain it, to fight in the remaining categories.
Ergo, Top Rank’s Trampler estimates, “a good third of the (male) talent won’t be able to compete in the Olympics” — historically a proven avenue which many amateur fighters have used to catapult themselves into the pros, including Sugar Ray Leonard, Oscar De La Hoya, and Ali. Now, “there’s a lot of interest internationally. Most of the big-name fighters are in Europe right now, England, the Middle East.”
That’s true for funding, too. Since 2019, boxing has seen an influx of Saudi Arabian money, under the banner of the Riyadh Season, which was a sponsor of Álvarez vs. Crawford.
Some trainers, like Leonard Ellerbe, a lifetime boxer who managed Floyd Mayweather Jr. and now works as a coach at Mayweather Boxing and Fitness, see this cash infusion as a positive development for boxers choosing to fight in Vegas, especially since pay-per-view piracy is becoming a growing problem for all combat sports.
“It’s kind of hard to grow the sport from the fighters’ perspective, because (pay-per-view fees are) how they take care of their families,” Ellerbe says. “So that’s when you have a Turki Alalshikh (head of the Riyadh Season and the new owner of The Ring magazine), who stepped in, and he’s been able to pay the fighters so they can make the big fights.”
Others are more skeptical. “To what extent is the involvement of Saudi money an accelerant in pushing (Vegas) away from being a true fight capital, rather than the main cause of it?” says a former employee with a major boxing promotions company, who requested to speak on background for privacy reasons. “Rather, to me, maybe it’s just a symptom.”
A symptom of, perhaps, a declining public interest in the sport as a whole, with the exception of the glitzy title fights.
“When I moved to Vegas, we had the Review-Journal, and we had the Sun,” Trampler says. “They had beat writers for (boxing), and they would write two or three advance stories the week of the fight. They’d cover the weigh-in. They’d cover the fight. They’d have a post-fight story. I doubt there (were any dedicated boxing) writers (at the Álvarez vs. Crawford match). It’s become a niche.”
Despite this, experts are cautious about claiming boxing has no future in Las Vegas. Rather, it’s simply changing as promoters attempt to find the correct fit for a city with so many sports options. Most recently, that approach has spawned The Underdog boxing event series, launched by The Ring and announced in late August, ahead of the Álvarez vs. Crawford fight. Featuring a pro boxing showdown each month, starting at the Fontainebleau, the event is trying to keep people engaged with the sport, hence the regular events to supplement the larger, more uncommon title fights Vegas still sees.
“There’s nothing like Vegas,” says Fedor Banuchi, Fontainebleau’s senior vice president of entertainment. “We have 150,000-plus hotel rooms within driving distance of each other, all within 10 minutes from the airport. It’s a city purpose-built for events, unlike all the other major metropolitan areas.”
And while the city, and the sport, attempt to bolster the amateur ranks, Vegas’ amateur fighters themselves are seeing individual successes. That’s especially true for those emerging from the UNLV Boxing Club, whose latest up-and-comer, Wyatt English, won the super heavyweight (225-plus pounds) national championship at this year’s U.S. Intercollegiate Boxing Association tournament in Georgia.
“You’re part of a legacy,” says English’s trainer, UNLV Boxing Club head coach Jason Crocco. “You don’t have to be Mike Tyson or Floyd Mayweather. You can be that first-time fighter, and you’re still a part of history and a part of a community.”
Top Rank’s Trampler agrees with that rosy outlook. “When Atlantic City legalized gambling, that immediately produced a burst of fights that lasted for years. … At the time, everyone said, ‘Forget Vegas! Atlantic City is going to kill Vegas. Nobody’s going to fly from the East Coast for a fight.’ But they were wrong. The best have always fought in Vegas. And there’s a reason for that. You can fill in the blanks.”
