Robert Earl, the London-born owner of Planet Hollywood Las Vegas, wanted to become a player in the city’s prodigious gaming industry, so he required a vehicle to attract the high-rollers to the newest resort and casino on the Strip. Sandwiched between Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis at ringside for the Floyd Mayweather-Ricky Hatton fight last December, he realised that world championship boxing - synonymous with the growth of this desert oasis - could still do the trick. “We’ve got to be in this business,” Stallone said to his friend and business partner, who promptly paid $12m to secure the right to stage Bernard Hopkins-Joe Calzaghe at the 18,776-seater Thomas & Mack Center, the largest indoor arena in Las Vegas.

The synergy between boxing and gambling, along with the playboy antics of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, those original purveyors of cool, put this city on the map in the 1960s. Madison Square Garden in New York was boxing’s citadel, for decades the site of the biggest fights, but the mob and world heavyweight champion Sonny Liston had found a new and profitable playground. Liston’s first-round knockout of Floyd Patterson, the man from whom he had taken the title in 1962 at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, was the first world heavyweight title bout held in Vegas. On December 6, 1969, a non-title bout between Liston and Leotis Martin headlined the first boxing event to be hosted by a Vegas hotel, the International Hotel, where Elvis Presley was the star attraction. Kirk Kerkorian, the hotel’s owner, would broker a $200m deal with promoter Don King years later to bring Mike Tyson to the MGM Grand following his three-year imprisonment for raping beauty pageant contestant Desiree Washington.

“Tyson fighting there opened up the MGM, which in time-honoured tradition is what Robert Earl is hoping to achieve with Planet Hollywood by putting on a fistic extravaganza like Hopkins-Calzaghe,” says King. “Vegas, baby, was built on gambling and boxing because these activities, simultaneously pleasurable and painful, attract the same dichotomy of people. They are a perfect fit, like Muhammad Ali’s hands and boxing gloves.”

Ali fought four times in Vegas during the 1970s, driving almost 1,800 miles from his home in Chicago in a Bluebird Wonderlust bus on one occasion in 1973 to take on Joe Bugner. In 1978, the fading 36-year-old world heavyweight champion lost his title to seven-fight novice Leon Spinks at the Las Vegas Hilton (formerly the International Hotel), the first world heavyweight title fight at a hotel on the Strip. It was, however, two years later that the era of the Vegas “superfight” was ushered in by Ali’s pitiable comeback bout against Larry Holmes, his successor as heavyweight king. Caesars Palace owner Cliff Perlman ordered the biggest outdoor arena ever built for a fight in the city and the crowd of 24,570 packed into the parking lot generated a gate of $5,766,125, but the miracle they had come to witness did not pass. “I had nothing and I knew it was hopeless,” Ali reflected. “All I could think of after the first round was, ‘Oh God, I still have 14 rounds to go’.” The fight was stopped by Angelo Dundee, Ali’s trainer, at the end of the 10th.

“That was one of the saddest sights in boxing, Ali slumped on his stool and unable to continue, but the Ali-Holmes fight and then Sugar Ray Leonard-Tommy Hearns [which drew a crowd of 23,306 to Caesars Palace in 1981, accumulating $4,865,150 at the gate] convinced Caesars and the owners of the other big hotels that boxing was great business,” said Bob Arum, whose Top Rank boxing pro-motion company is based in Vegas. Arum promoted some of the greatest bouts of the 1980s at Caesars Palace, including Marvin Hagler-Sugar Ray Leonard, Hagler-Hearns and the Leonard-Hearns rematch, while King attracted the highest crowd in the history of Vegas boxing - 29,214 – to the 1982 heavyweight title clash between Holmes and Gerry Cooney. “The gate was $6,239,050, the biggest in boxing to that point,” King recalled.

Entrepreneur Donald Trump lured King and Tyson to America’s east coast by offering a package that gave Tyson a $25.5m purse to fight Michael Spinks at the Convention Hall in Atlantic City. Tyson’s title defences against Holmes, Tyrell Biggs and Carl Williams were all held at the same venue, a sequence interrupted only by the violently-repelled challenge of Frank Bruno, whom Tyson stopped in 1989 at the Las Vegas Hilton, which had put up $7m to bring Tyson back to the boxing capital of the world. “Only a few thousand people bothered to buy tickets and hotel executives learned a brutal lesson in fight economics: you can’t find enough high-rolling gamblers to cover a $4m loss at the gate,” Tim Dahlberg reported in his authoritative book, Fight Town. “Steve Wynn also found that out when he opened The Mirage and lost millions in the opening fight, Sugar Ray Leonard’s third encounter with Roberto Duran.”

After Tyson was knocked out in Tokyo by Buster Douglas in 1990, Wynn flew the new world heavyweight champion to Vegas from Ohio in his private jet and offered him a $24m purse to defend his title against Evander Holyfield. The Mirage’s owner envisaged a two-fight deal, with a blockbuster rematch against Tyson to follow. But a gargantuan Douglas, whose preparation included ordering pizza in a hotel sauna several days before the fight, was knocked out by Holyfield in the third round and The Mirage withdrew from boxing shortly afterwards. Now the emergence of Golden Boy Promotions (based in Los Angeles and headed by Oscar De La Hoya, a bona fide Las Vegas star) as the preeminent boxing promoter in the US has returned the city to its former status within the sport. “When we promoted Mayweather-Hatton we had Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Tiger Woods, David Beckham and a host of other stars at ringside,” said De La Hoya, who will co-promote Hopkins-Calzaghe with Frank Warren. De La Hoya’s light-middleweight title bout against Mayweather last year at the MGM Grand generated a gate of £18,419,200 and more than $120m in pay-per-view revenue from a record 2.4m buys. The economic gain for the local economy was estimated at $12.5m. Getting in on the action made sense for Planet Hollywood and Robert Earl.

Fights that made Vegas

MUHAMMAD ALI V LARRY HOLMES, 1980

Caesars Palace constructed a huge temporary outdoor arena. The fight sold out and the casino ‘drop’ was unprecedented, but it was a sad night for boxing. Ali suffered a brutal beating

SUGAR RAY LEONARD V THOMAS HEARNS, 1981

Trailing on points, Leonard rallied to knock Hearns out in the 14th round. Hearns lost another historic Vegas fight; a three-round defeat in 1985 to Marvin Hagler in one of the greatest nonstop slugfests

EVANDER HOLYFIELD V MIKE TYSON, 1997

It was the defining moment in Tyson’s career. He was disqualified in the third round for biting off part of Holyfield’s ear

LENNOX LEWIS V EVANDER HOLYFIELD, 1999

Earlier in the year, Las Vegas lost out to Madison Square Garden for the title-unification bout between the two champions. When that ended in a draw, the casinos pooled their resources to ensure the rematch landed in Vegas. This time, the casinos and Lewis won

OSCAR DE LA HOYA V FLOYD MAYWEATHER JR, 2007

Set new standards with a live gate in excess of $19m. The contest was less than enthralling with Mayweather winning but at the end of the day, Las Vegas is about money, isn’t it?

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