Las Vegas has long been the unofficial boxing capital of the world.

The city has played host to some of the biggest fights in history, and "The Greatest," Muhammad Ali, is an important part of that history.

That's this week on Nevada Week.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt and additional supporting sponsors.

(Kipp Ortenburger) Boxing and Las Vegas are intertwined in a remarkable way from Sonny Liston bouts in the '60s to Floyd Mayweather's recent reign.

Las Vegas and the "sweet science," as they call it, have worked together.

Without a doubt the biggest boxing matches in Las Vegas included The Greatest, Muhammad Ali.

A new look at the champ's life through the lens of filmmaker Ken Burns is being featured on Vegas PBS this month.

Well, joining us to talk about boxing in Las Vegas and of course Ali's legacy are Sam Gordon, sports reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal; Cassandra Cousineau, combat sports reporter and writer for the blog The Sportsnista; Andreas Hale, senior editor of combat sports for The Sporting News magazine, and Kevin Iole, boxing reporter for Yahoo Sports.

Well, thank you so much for being here; we really appreciate it.

It's very rare for us to have four journalists around our table, especially four journalists covering the same beat, so we're really excited about this conversation.

Before we talk about Ali, I want to go back and talk a little bit about the sport of boxing and its connection to Las Vegas.

I was surprised to learn the first big fight, 1955 here, kind of in the infancy of the casino and the resort industry, and it happened in Cashman Field.

-Yes, outdoor fights were big.

-I guess so.

I mean, let's talk a little bit about how Las Vegas and boxing became so intertwined so early.

Anybody jump in.

(Kevin Iole) You know, what happened was the casino operators realized we need to get people to come and fill these casinos up more often, and we need to bring people in, our best customers.

So the best way they found in the early days of Las Vegas was to go ahead and have big fights and bring their best customers in.

In the early days when it started, Kipp, the big difference from now was all the casinos would cooperate, and wherever the fight was, if it was at the Las Vegas Convention Center or Cashman Field, they would all buy blocks of tickets, so it made the event a community event and that really got it started.

They worked together as opposed to saying we want to keep everybody on our property and not let them go out.

Now it's almost all from one property when the fights are here.

They don't necessarily work together like they used to.

-Interesting.

When did that change?

When did we see it was a change from everybody cooperating maybe to more of the regular, you know, just one casino?

-I think when the megaresorts came.

You know, when the MGM came in and then Mandalay Bay, when they first opened, they were separate so then MGM was competing with Mandalay Bay for events.

Caesars Palace certainly was separate then, and they were competing with MGM and Mandalay Bay until it was in the '90s when that really started changing.

-Andreas, let's get your perspective here too.

I mean, why boxing?

Why Las Vegas?

Why are we so connected?

(Andreas Hale) I mean, it's the Entertainment Capital of the World.

I mean, if fighting is a universal language, then what better place to have it than a place where all walks of life come in and all walks of life come to gamble and enjoy themselves.

Fighting is a spectacle, and Las Vegas in itself is a spectacle.

So these things are intertwined, so there's no reason why it should be anywhere else.

Yes, we've seen boxing in other cities and other countries, but there's no place like Las Vegas.

The bright lights of Sin City, it's beautiful.

(Sam Gordon) I just think with that in mind, the thing that makes boxing unique is not-- it's not like a game, it's the events.

It's an event, and there's a different feel to a boxing event than a football game or a basketball game just because, like you said, it's universal.

It's a universal sport.

It's something we all kind of enjoy and are captivated by.

So with that in mind, I think like you said, it makes it a perfect fit for Vegas.

-Universal and yes, such a connection to the entertainment side of this.

So much goes on in addition to the boxing matches in our city when we have a big-marquee boxing match.

But let's talk about how it's been sustained.

I mean, you know, it's grown.

It seems to have grown all the way through.

Why is it so sustainable here in Vegas?

Is it the entertainment aspect to it?

-I think that's certainly a big part of it.

I think like just a lot of the tradition and the history.

You know, like Kevin touched on, since 1955, and things kind of snowballed from there.

You saw the best fighters in the world come here to fight the biggest fights and, you know, even though there are other markets that can sustain boxing, there's still nothing quite like Vegas for all the things it provides: The gambling, the entertainment, everything that comes along with it.

The city is one of one, and there's no better place to host a big fight than Vegas.

-Yes, it's so unique.

(Cassandra Cousineau) I also write for lvsportsbiz.com, and we cover the business side of sports.

When you talk about what happened, what was the big shift in boxing and why it became so big in terms of Las Vegas entertainment, you have to mention Floyd Mayweather.

Floyd Mayweather is involved in what, half of all the top 10 fights of top grossing in Las Vegas or actually of all time, $77 million.

There's another $55 million fight against Conor McGregor, Pacquiao was at 72, and then a handful of $20 million fights as well.

Also you gotta look at what changed in the pricing.

Ringside seats could be $500 when Caesars Palace was putting on those fights outside in 100-degree heat, and ringside seats now can cost you $10,000 or more, so the crowd changed as well.

So you have a different clientele who can pay those prices as opposed to the ones who can go ahead and break off $50 as opposed to $15,000.

-You know, Cassandra, I'm going to disagree with you a little bit.

I don't think it was people who could afford the tickets, because people who were sitting in those tickets aren't paying for those tickets.

I think really what happened, Vegas became the boxing capital I think in the '80s when-- you know, Ali was in the '60s and '70s, but Ali only fought here seven times out of 60 fights, so he was not-- even though he was the biggest fighter in the world, Las Vegas wasn't a base for him.

But I think Caesars Palace first recognized how big boxing could be because you could put all the other events with it.

You could put concerts, you could have all sorts of things in the casino, so you could keep your best players in town for several days, and that would give them a reason to stay.

So Caesars Palace in the '80s turned Las Vegas into the boxing capital of the world by putting on all these big fights, and you think of Sugar Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns, Marvin Hagler, Roberto Duran, Julio Cesar Chavez.

And then later in the '80s, Mike Tyson came along, and I think that really propelled Las Vegas' rise as the boxing capital.

While we had fights from the '50s through the '70s, the big fights really started coming on a regular basis in the 1980s.

-Yes, and let's talk about the big fights.

-Certainly if you look at like the individuals who were sitting in those front rows though, they're not necessarily paying for those seats, but they have the cachet to actually be in those front row seats.

They aren't just guys that they're grabbing off the street.

They're influencers, they are top-tier athletes and actors sitting there.

-And Cassandra, really important, the draw that brings those types of people and that type of money to those seats, and this is a big concept here, the "superfight."

I don't want to make the assumption that the superfight started here in Vegas, maybe it seemed, and I want to get back to Ali and Ali's legacy.

Being that he was such a big marquee figure at the time, Cassandra, what's his legacy?

What's his impact on growing boxing in Las Vegas?

Is it the superfight?

-It is the superfight, but when I was growing up, I was raised by my granddaddy and we listened to boxing and baseball on the radio.

That's how I was introduced to the sport.

And as a Black man who had served multiple tours in several wars, Ali meant something different to my granddaddy and in the Black community, and when Ali was covered in his prime and even before that, he wasn't revered as the greatest.

I mean, Kevin could attest to that, that the narrative wasn't that this was a man who was bringing in great fights and great events and he was to be revered.

He was a lot of backlash because of the decisions that he had made and what he was talking about politically.

I think a lot of that has dissipated a little and his legacy now is really talking about how great of a boxer he was, and some of it's embellished.

-It wasn't just the things he said and I think that really changed.

But Ali has an indelible impact on Las Vegas.

I mean, when you think of boxing and Las Vegas, even though Ali didn't fight as much as Floyd Mayweather, as much as Mike Tyson, you think of Muhammad Ali and the major events that he had.

And, you know, his fight with Larry Holmes, it was a sad ending to his career basically, but that was just a megafight there and the Leon Spinks fight when it led to a rematch that had 93 million people watch it in New Orleans on ABC.

You know, Ali is just inextricably tied to Las Vegas, and he helped the casino operators understand that Las Vegas would be a great place for boxing to work.

And his fight with Joe Frazier in 1971 nearly ended up in Las Vegas.

It ended up in Madison Square Garden.

I think that would be the first superfight, March 8, 1971, Frazier versus Ali.

You had two unbeaten heavyweight champions fighting each other.

But really that fight could have been-- Bob Arum, the promoter of Top Rank, had that fight set to come to Las Vegas.

Governor Laxalt at the time had agreed to put the fight here, but Moe Dalitz decided he didn't want the fight here and that got it canceled.

-It's amazing, the variables that lead to fights being in Las Vegas or elsewhere.

We talked a little bit about Ali inside the ring.

We talked about Ali the outside the ring.

I want to talk more about that, but I want to go to a clip first, very appropriate for this conversation.

As we just said, Muhammad Ali had a powerful presence inside and outside the ring.

A Las Vegan who knew him outside the ring is Cindy Doumani, a former showgirl who befriended the champ in the 1960s.

(Cindy Doumani) I met my husband here in Vegas and I married him in 1960, and we moved to Vegas he said for six months only, and we've never left.

We built the La Concha and then the El Morocco, and then he bought into the Tropicana Hotel.

In 1965 Cindy met famed boxing champion Muhammad Ali.

He was known as Cassius Clay.

He was not Muhammad Ali then.

He stayed at our motel, the El Morocco, and I would go to see him every day.

My son Freddy was 2-1/2, and he wanted to box with Cassius every day.

He was one of the kindest persons I've ever known.

He was very special and so kind and good to my son.

Cindy even allowed Cassius and his sparring partner Jimmy Ellis to take Freddy to explore Downtown Las Vegas.

I was very cautious about my children, but I looked at Jimmy Ellis and Cassius Clay and I thought, they're going to be safer than with anybody.

So they took him.

They were gone for a couple hours and when Freddy came back, he was smiling.

He had some gifts, I forget what they were, but he was so happy.

And I trusted-- I would trust them with my own children.

Cindy also saw Cassius behave as the flamboyant showman he was when they and others visited a Las Vegas coffee shop.

The four of us were in a booth when Joe Frazier comes by.

Well, he stopped by and started talking to Cassius, and Cassius says, I'm going to "whup" you.

And then Joe would talk back and they were verbally sparring, and pretty soon everybody in the coffee shop, some came over and were standing up around them.

They put on a show for everybody.

Cassius Clay, Muhammad Ali, was a great entertainer, an activist, a philanthropist, and a friend to a young boy and his family who cherish their memories of "The Greatest."

Thank you, Heather, we appreciate it.

You know, I mean, the persona of Muhammad Ali and the person of Muhammad Ali, sometimes different sometimes the same.

Andreas, I want to ask you as a reporter-- or maybe not as a reporter, just having a cup of coffee with Muhammad Ali, if you had the opportunity to do so-- minus having Frazier maybe walk up-- what would be a question you'd want to ask him?

-I mean, listen, Muhammad Ali is somebody who emboldened me as a writer to diversify the space because he used his platform for change.

You look at athletes today like LeBron James, you look at Colin Kaepernick, it took a lot of bravery for LeBron and Colin to do what they did.

But what Muhammad Ali did was unreal.

He risked his entire life, his career.

That's a conversation I want to have, because it was never just about him.

He was The Greatest.

He gave away his prime years for the people, and that's the conversation I would love to have with him because we've never seen another athlete like that.

Even if we talk about LeBron James, we love what LeBron James does for the community, but he didn't have to give away his career and his millions of dollars to do what he's done.

Muhammad Ali did, and he became a public speaker and he became an actor.

And for people like myself, young men like myself, young African American men and women, he was a lightning rod for us.

It was bigger than boxing, and those conversations, I would love to talk boxing with him.

I'd love to talk about the Floyd Patterson fight.

I'd love to talk about Joe Frazier.

But I'd just like to talk about him.

What makes a man give up everything that he fought for for another fight?

-Yes.

Great question.

Sam, I'd ask you the same thing.

-I think, you know, to build off what he said, I think that's-- Muhammad Ali's legacy is unapologetically himself in the ring, but more importantly, unapologetically himself outside the ring.

So I think that's his greatest legacy is what he was able to do, paving the way for LeBron, for Colin Kaepernick because, you know, context matters.

He was doing what he was doing in the '60s.

It was a way different time then and, you know, with everything that was going on, for him to do that, for him to risk his career at that time, at the peak when he's at the apex of the sport, you talk about fearlessness and bravery, I mean, he embodied those things.

So that's what I'd want to talk about with him also.

I think that's more important than what he accomplished in the ring for sure.

-For sure, Sam, and I want to go to something that you've been covering quite a bit, Ali's living legacy.

I mean, we have his grandchildren living in Las Vegas.

We have a grandson that recently boxed for the first time.

Of course we have Laila Ali with such an important career as well.

Talk a little bit about that.

What's the legacy of the Ali family moving forward from here?

-Yes.

I had a chance to spend some time with his grandson, Nico Ali Walsh, in July before his debut in August and I think, you know, he wants to box to not only honor his grandfather but he wants to box for himself too and it's twofold, so he understood.

He spoke to me about the importance of yes, it's a burden at times but it's also an honor to be able to follow in his grandfather's footsteps.

So like you said, his legacy lives on and of course his daughter Laila was one of the faces of women's boxing and, you know, from my perspective, one of the women that helped advance women's boxing into the mainstream.

Now, it's not anywhere where it needs to be, but she was one of the-- you know, at least in my lifetime, one of those that helped push women's boxing more into the public space.

-And arguably one of the greatest ever in women's boxing.

-Right.

Let's talk about the journalism side, Cassandra, too.

Diversification of who we're seeing in the ring, gender specific also.

Let's talk about diversity in the journalists that are covering the sport.

Have we seen more diversity there?

-I think there's diversity in this room.

I don't think it actually exists as much as we'd like to see in the actual landscape.

I cover MMA and I cover boxing, and when UFC is in town and there's a big event, I am the only Black woman for miles, and in fact I haven't met one yet that's actually covering it on the beat.

Karyn is actually there.

Karyn Bryant is there for UFC and she's on the desk, but I'm talking about on the beat and actually writing about it, so I think that speaks volumes.

So there's opportunity, especially now with the introduction of digital journalism.

I've created my own brand of Sportsnista really to like create a light, and I had to do it.

There weren't doors for me so I built a door, and that allowed me to continue covering and also still writing for lvsportsbiz doing more of the business side of boxing.

But there's opportunities for journalists, young women, to be creative.

I have an eight-year-old son who's writing about combat sports because he hates writing, so I challenged him to do something he loves, WWE and boxing, so he's writing about those things.

But because there's an opportunity, because they have laptops now and they have iPads and they can get the information, what I'm hoping is the fact that the digital world has actually made everything smaller that there will be more younger, more diverse voices telling the stories of boxing, because they're different.

I find that younger writers aren't so hung up in the X's and O's.

They're finding more interesting angles to introduce when they're talking to athletes, because athletes are much more accessible now.

You can go to their Instagram and find out what their favorite food is.

-Well, you know, I agree with you.

My whole philosophy, the whole way I've covered boxing my entire life is not the X's and O's.

It's about their personalities and whatnot.

But as far as them being more available, I'm not sure I agree with that, because I think what Muhammad Ali did, and think what it is with the fighters now, Muhammad Ali would talk to any one of us at this table no matter what.

He didn't worry about how big your outlet was, how many Twitter followers you had, how big your Facebook page was.

He would talk to you because he wanted to promote the sport of boxing, and he wanted to promote himself.

And he got his idea for the way he promoted was his first fight in Las Vegas in 1961 against Duke Sabedong, a heavyweight who was six-foot-six.

Ali went to a wrestling match that week and he saw Gorgeous George wrestle.

He heard Gorgeous George and what he liked was the way Gorgeous George held that crowd in the palm of his hand and he saw how all the wrestlers did that, and that really stuck with him.

So while he always had that tendency to be outspoken and to be brash, seeing what Gorgeous George did and the professional wrestlers did really pushed him forward with the way he promoted himself.

And it was sad that he and Frasier had become such bitter enemies.

Well, Frazier hated him so much.

I don't think he hated Frazier because to Ali it was just promotion; to Frazier it was personal and that was really one of the sad things when you think of Ali's career, the fact that Joe Frazier passed away and they never really had that moment.

I knew Joe very well and I spent time with Joe later in his life, and if you mentioned Ali's name, you would get him very fired up.

And it was sad to see that he passed without ever having a chance to-- they had a little bit of a reconciliation, but not the way it should have been.

-Yes.

Kevin, great point about promotion here.

I want to bring it to this side of the table too and ask you guys.

Do you see a lot more accessibility in boxers, or do you see a little bit more of a curtain there, so to speak?

-It's kind of tricky because, you know, I agree with both of you because fighters are more accessible in terms of social media.

Now, to get through the gatekeepers in order to speak with the fighters, that's another challenge in itself.

But if a fighter takes a liking to you for whatever reason, because of what you like or what's on social media-- because I have followers who are fighters who enjoy the things that I tweet about that have nothing to do with boxing, and we forge relationships like that.

So I'll get access to a Shawn Porter, or I'll get access to a Jamal Charlo because maybe we're talking about hip-hop or things of that nature.

So we see it's kind of-- it's not like the Michael Jackson days, right, where Michael Jackson was completely untouchable.

But now you can reach somebody through social media, but now we still have gatekeepers who get in the way who ask how many Twitter followers do you have?

How many Instagram followers do you have?

I can't grant you this interview.

I'll give you five minutes.

Ali didn't do that as you mentioned, Kevin.

Ali would talk to anybody.

Now it's a little bit different.

So there's pros and cons on both sides.

I do want to add something to Ali in terms of diversity because me being an African American male, Ali was like the grandfather of hip-hop to me.

You know, who was rhyming like that at that time?

Also, everything is pro wrestling.

As we talk about Gorgeous George, everything is pro wrestling from the rappers and how they speak and in battle rap on the corners to how fighters promote, they all took it from Ali who took it from Gorgeous George.

So when we talk about Las Vegas being the Entertainment Capital of the World, the foundation is all right here.

-Yes, all right here and so much about Ali too.

Let's talk about the future of sport, okay?

Boxing is not exclusive to Las Vegas as the only big sport we have of course.

We're seeing professional sports everywhere.

How much do you attribute that to the origins of boxing?

-A ton of it, a ton of it.

I said four or five years ago that Las Vegas was on the precipice of becoming a major sports town, and it's here.

We have the Raiders putting 60,000 people in Allegiant Stadium.

You have UFC put in 15-, 18,000.

You have UFC doing-- sorry, VGK doing 20,000.

The WNBA is here.

But the DNA is boxing.

Boxing was a proof of concept that Las Vegas could actually handle these big events, that people would come to this desert city, spend their time and their money and do other things and not just actually go to the event and come home.

So I do think that Las Vegas, when you talk about sports and professional sports, you have to pay homage to what boxing was able to actually lay out in foundation.

-Interesting.

On the back end though now, so much more competition.

Boxing isn't the only thing in town, right?

Where do you see the future going, do you think boxing still has a place here?

Do you think it's going to be really competitive for boxing to survive?

-I think boxing is always going to have a place in Las Vegas.

I mean, they're always going to be intertwined.

You have a big fight week here, there's still just such a unique feel to it and it might not be, you know, the only show in town anymore like it used to be.

Like Cassandra said, you have the Raiders, you have UFC, you still have UNLV, you have WNBA, you have VGK, so there's more things to do.

Just in the five years that I've been here, I got here in 2016, the Knights weren't here yet, the Raiders weren't here yet, the Aces weren't here yet.

So it was boxing, it was UNLV, it was MMA, it was prep.

So it's changed just in the last five years, but you still see big fights coming back here.

This is still the preeminent location for a big fight and even though the market is a little bit more crowded, there's always going to be space for boxing.

-And boxing has diversified, combat sports have diversified.

We're not just seeing boxing here, and a lot of our big events are not boxing related anymore.

Andreas, how has the coverage changed then?

-I mean, the coverage is-- yes, there's so many things going on, right?

So we have to cut new angles to bring people's attention to us with boxing.

We have to tell better stories, and when we see combat sports and the UFC or we see MMA or we see pro wrestling, we got to find better ways to tell stories, and that's how we get people engaged.

I mean, you look at somebody like Jake Paul where a lot of people are very critical of him as being this young social media maven who's, you know, dipping his toe into boxing's waters, but he's bringing a new audience to the sport.

He's bringing a brand-new audience to the sport because like I said earlier, boxing is a universal language.

If you have an intersection, somebody on the corner is playing basketball, somebody on the corner is playing football, somebody is playing soccer, two people are fighting, we're all going to the fight.

So fighting is always going to have a place in our hearts because it's the one thing that we can all speak.

Bad fights are fun fights.

Bad basketball is not fun basketball, but a bad fight is a fun fight.

Fights are fights.

-I think Las Vegas is going to struggle going forward with boxing to a certain degree, and you see Shawn Porter just had a fight announced with Terence Crawford.

One of the best fights that can be made in boxing.

Terence Crawford is arguably the best fighter in the world, and Porter is a former world champion.

That should be a spectacular fight.

That's going to be at Mandalay Bay instead of T-Mobile Arena because of the size of the arena.

You're going to have 10,000 people there as opposed to 20,000.

More than half the tickets for that event are going to be $50 or $100 tickets, again because they just don't draw anymore like they used to, and I think part of it is, you know, boxing promoters are being smart now, and they're putting it where there's a natural audience for it.

So a lot of Terence Crawford's fights were in Omaha, Nebraska where he is from, where he is revered, and what they find is it's better for TV.

If you get a crowd that's passionate for the fight and into the fight, then you get it there.

Las Vegas is always going to be the home for the superfight, the really big fight.

It's going to be hard for anybody else.

You know, the Middle East is now becoming a destination and it's going to challenge Las Vegas a little bit, but Las Vegas is always going to be a big spot for the superfight.

But anything other than those superfights, I think it's going to be very difficult for Las Vegas to get a lot of those fights on a consistent basis because they work better in other places now.

-That fight is also two weeks after the big fight, Canelo and Caleb Plant.

Caleb Plant is kind of a "sub plant" into Las Vegas from Tennessee.

And then it's also going to be just weeks before Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury, so boxing is sort of cannibalizing itself a little bit in Las Vegas when it comes to those smaller fights.

-Then you have Wilder/Fury fighting on October 9, then you have Canelo fighting on November 6, then you have Crawford and Porter on November 20.

So it's really... -Yes, and you have UFC sneaking in there too.

-Busy.

-Very busy.

Well, listen, I'd like to thank our guests Sam Gordon, with the Las Vegas Review Journal; Sandra Cousineau, Sportsnista; Andreas Hale, The Sporting News, and Kevin Iole with Yahoo Sports.

Thank you as always for joining us this week on Nevada Week.

For any of the resources discussed on the show, please visit our website at vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek.

You can also find us on social media at @nevadaweek.

Thanks again, and we'll see you next week.

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