Legendary boxing matches – Legendary boxers: The largest attendance at a boxing match

Author: Zizi

There are matches, which are never to be forgotten, and there are boxing icons, who are going to stay with us for eternity.

Boxing has always been one of the most popular sports. People like watching fights and even in the age of the PPV-s, television, and streaming services, there is something in the atmosphere of the boxing matches that attracts people to watch them in person.

If we talk about the largest attendance at a boxing match, there are two ways to approach it: non-paying and paying matches. In the first case at the match between the middleweight champion Tony “Man of Steel” Zale vs the challenger Billy Pryor there were 135,132 people at Juneau Park, Milwaukee (USA) in 1941. The fight was not so exciting, because the champion easily defended his title, knocking his opponent down eight times before the match was stopped in the ninth round.

If we look at the paying matches, the absolute record belongs to the legendary Julio Cesar Chavez, the boxing icon from Mexico. In 1993 Chavez, as the WBC super-lightweight champion, was challenged by Greg Haugen from US. The Mexican was unbeaten at that time with 84 wins and 0 losses. Despite of his record Haugen told him before their fight “Came against Tijuana taxi drivers that my mom could whip”.

Well, because of this statement and the fact that boxing was and still is one of the most popular sports in Mexico, 132,274 people went to the Azteca Stadium., Mexico City to see the clash. Chavez absolutely dominated the fight and it was over by TKO in the fifth round. Haugen was beaten brutally. But the challenger showed to the crowd he has a good sense of humor because after the match he said to Chavez: “They must have been very tough taxi drivers”.

Source: planetsport.com