Fight tough ticket for Hatton fans

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It took only a few minutes Monday for the Dec. 8 world welterweight title fight between champion Floyd Mayweather and British challenger Ricky Hatton to sell out the 16,000-seat MGM Grand Garden.

It took a lot less to raise the collective ire of Hatton’s loyal legion of fans from England, the majority of whom were shut out in their attempt to secure a seat and will have to settle for a pay-per-view ticket if they decide to come to Las Vegas.

In negotiating the deal to land the megafight, Hatton’s connections secured just 3,900 tickets. Given the demand among his fans is nearly tenfold, landing a seat to watch Manchester’s favorite son was akin to an NFL season-ticket holder scoring in his team’s lottery for a seat to the Super Bowl.

It forces the Hatton contingent to do one of two things — stay home in the U.K. and watch it on pay per view or troll the Internet and hope to secure a bargain on StubHub or some other ticket broker’s Web site. For some who had laid out money for airfare and hotel rooms in anticipation of scoring seats, that will become an expensive option to an already-pricey junket.

At Monday’s news conference in Los Angeles, Hatton apologized to his fans.

“I am proud of this but very sorry for all my fans,” he said. “Ten thousand people always follow my fights, and most of them won’t get a ticket.”

One of those fans, Las Vegan Perry Bruno, couldn’t understand how a fight could sell out so fast.

“I was first on line at Smith’s (Ticketmaster), and when I tried to buy tickets, I was told there were none available,” Bruno said. “How can that be?”

Ticketmaster spokesperson Bonnie Poindexter said it’s not unusual for a high-demand event like Mayweather-Hatton to sell out quickly, even within minutes.

“There are thousands of people trying to buy tickets, so it’s a supply-and-demand situation,” Poindexter said. “Ticketmaster doesn’t control the number of seats available. That falls to the venue, in this case, the MGM. However many tickets they release to us, that’s what we sell to the public.”

Poindexter didn’t know how many seats the MGM offered. MGM officials would not divulge the number, either. But with each camp receiving 3,900 seats, a couple thousand set aside for VIPs and a few thousand more for the hotel’s preferred clientele and those of other properties, there likely wasn’t more than a couple thousand seats available for public sale.

Locally, MGM Mirage moved quickly to set up several closed-circuit locations. In addition to the MGM Grand, The Mirage, Treasure Island, New York-New York, Luxor, Monte Carlo and Excalibur will show the fight. General admission tickets are $50 plus handling fees, and there is an eight-ticket limit per person.

To Bruno, who used to live in London and has been in Las Vegas for 15 years, that’s small consolation.

“We’re local people. We support the casinos here year-round,” he said. “Why can’t they set aside a few tickets for the local fans?”

• GARDEN CARD OFF? — With WBC heavyweight champion Oleg Maskaev injuring his back and pulling out of his Oct. 6 title defense against Nigeria’s Samuel Peter, the card at Madison Square Garden is in jeopardy.

Main Events’ Dino Duva, who co-promotes Peter, questions the timing of Maskaev’s injury and wants the show to go on with a different opponent. No decision has been made whether to cancel or postpone the card.

It also was supposed to be the debut of the Garden’s new boxing ring. The previous ring, which debuted at the old Garden on 8th Avenue and West 50th Street in 1925, also was used for fights at Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds. And it was the ring in which Joe Frazier defeated Muhammad Ali in the “Fight of the Century” in 1971 at the current Garden on 7th Avenue and West 33rd Street.

The ring, which featured brass posts, is headed to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, N.Y. But the brass bell, used at ringside, will remain at the Garden and continue to be used for fights there.