The news conference afterward was filled with the usual congratulations for the winners and talk about bigger things to come. Oscar De La Hoya was the promoter and he answered questions in two languages, thanked all for coming and declared the night a success.
Outside, HBO was hosting a poolside party at the MGM Grand hotel-casino for those lucky enough to get an invite. There was plenty of food, drink and laughter for the fight crowd.
Spirits weren't so high in a hospital not far from the glittering Las Vegas Strip. There, Leavander Johnson lay in a coma in the intensive care unit, his doctor unsure he would survive the night.
This was the dark side of boxing, the one that fans who pay US$500 to sit ringside never see.
Johnson had hoped to end the biggest night of his boxing life with the IBF lightweight title belt still around his waist. He might have even enjoyed himself at the HBO party afterward.
Instead, he was in a deep coma that doctors induced to try to save his life.
"He was fighting for a world title, then a few minutes later here he is fighting for his life," said Johnson's father, Bill, who also is his trainer.
Johnson said his son knew the risks. He had been fighting for money for 16 years, and understood that taking punches to the head could be dangerous.
Unfortunately, as Mike Tyson likes to say, boxing is a hurt business.
But it shouldn't hurt this bad.
Johnson left the ring upright, not knowing that a blood clot was beginning to form that swelled so big it moved his brain from the right side of his skull to the left. When his left leg began dragging on the way to the dressing room, though, it was clear something was terribly wrong.
The doctors of the Nevada Athletic Commission saw it and acted quickly.
In the space of 40 minutes, they got him to the hospital and then into surgery. A surgeon took out a piece of his skull to get in, then left it open so his brain would have room to swell.
Johnson may live, though it's too early to tell. The problem is, his injury is not an isolated one.
Four times in the last four months in Las Vegas, boxers have left the ring bleeding in the brain. One is dead, while two others survived.
It's scary, but also puzzling. It might be a statistical anomaly, but doctors can't say. They just don't know enough about why some fighters are injured while others can spend a career getting hit in the head and show no ill effects.
The only thing they're sure of is it isn't something in the water.
"That is the biggest concern of all, that there have been so many of these," said Dr. Margaret Goodman, a neurologist and the ringside doctor who examined Johnson during the fight. "I think we need to evaluate the system from top to bottom."
What is clear is that Johnson took a savage beating in a fight that probably shouldn't have gone as far as it did, 38 seconds into the 11th round.
The 35-year-old fighter spent 16 years chasing a title, and finally won one on an upset in Italy in June. His reward was a US$150,000 payday to defend his title on a card that included fighters with pedigrees such as Shane Mosley and Marco Antonio Barrera.
He fought valiantly, but was outclassed by Jesus Chavez, who rarely missed with punches that were thrown with bad intentions. Bill Johnson warned his son at one point he was going to stop the fight, but it continued into the 11th round when Chavez threw some two dozen unanswered punches and referee Tony Weeks finally stopped it.
Goodman immediately leaped into the ring to tend to the fighter. He said he was OK, didn't have a headache and wasn't dizzy.
"I'm just sad and disappointed," Leavander Johnson told the doctor.
In a way, he was lucky. If another half hour had been wasted getting Johnson into the operating room, he likely would have died, just as 75 percent or more of fighters with such injuries do.
But something is surely amiss. Four brain injuries in four months in one city is four too many. It's a wakeup call that blares at boxing regulators to try to find out why.
A good start might be brain scans before every fight, though promoters argue the cost would be exorbitant.
As it is, no one knows if Johnson came into the fight with a brain problem, just as no one knows whether he was injured by a punch in the first round or the punches that finally ended the fight.
"Maybe we can't find the answer, but it's something that has to be done and done very quickly," Goodman said.
It's too late for Leavander Johnson. All anyone can hope is that his brain responds when doctors wean him off the drugs that induced his coma in a few days.
But it's not too late for those who come after him.
Even in a hurt business, they deserve a little help.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier