Ricco Rodriguez back in the boxing ring…
By Jim Murphy September 17th, 2008If at first you don’t succeed….
The September 30th boxing card at the Silver Nugget Casino in N Las Vegas will be unique in that it will headline a former UFC heavyweight champion in his quest to win the heavywight championship as both an MMA comatant and as a boxer.
In 2004 Ricco Rodriquez upset UFC legend Randy Couture for their heavyweight championship. In 2007, he embarked on a pro boxing career, winning his first fight in Houston and then losing a controversial decision on July 8th at the Las Vegas Hilton to even his record at 1-1.
Rodriquez will fight San Francisco heavyweight Yohan Banks in the Silver Nugget bout, which will be held in their newly renovated 14,000 sq ft Events Center, dubbed the Silver Nugget Fight Club.
A few things worth pointing out here:
1) For you aspiring PR flaks, make sure to spell check your press releases before you send them out. Otherwise you get what we’ve copied above, describing “Ricco Rodriquez” as a “heavywight comatant”.
2) Even if Randy Couture rips through Brock Lesnar, the Mir/Nogueira winner *and* manages to tap out Fedor in the first round he’ll never live down losing to Ricco. In all fairness, Ricco had some serious pop back in the day but still…
3) The event will air live on streaming TV channel TV4U.com. TV4U.com is actually pretty cool–they have a whole bunch of streaming channels where you’ll find all kinds of programming from the downright historic (the first Ali/Liston fight) to the downright bizarre (infomercials on demand).
Noted boxing ref Richard Steele is promoting the event, which will take place on September 30th at North Las Vegas’ Silver Nugget Casino. Might be worth a trip down to “Paris in the Desert” to observe the proceedings live…the last time Ricco entered the ring it was something of a train wreck, with Mike Tyson heckling him from ringside and Las Vegas gossip columnists reporting on the event…
Ricco Rodriguez back in the ring @ PR.com
This is the first live boxing event hosted at the Silver Nugget in over a decade…in all seriousness, we’re always glad to see more live boxing. In particular, its nice to see a venue for lower profile fighters. If you’re in the Las Vegas area check it out and give ‘em some support…
Just be sure not to go too far *past* the Silver Nugget, or else you’ll find yourself at Las Vegas’ only full nude/full bar strip club aka the world famous Palomino Club. Not that any of us would know anything about *that*…
