Planet Hollywood slips in a promising title bout

By John Katsilometes

Friday, July 4, 2008 | 4:42 p.m.

The music droning through the relatively muted mezzanine level of Planet Hollywood, fittingly, is Bob Dylan's "Everybody Must Get Stoned." The ring the fighters use for public workouts stands next to the hotel's wedding chapel. The fight itself will be staged in the Planet Hollywood Theatre for the Performing Arts, the same venue used by the Miss America Pageant, a far more civilized but similarly spirited competition.

If styles make fights, the Planet Hollywood and Ricardo Torres-Kendall Hope II would seem a mismatch. But Planet Hollywood is reliably inventive with its venues -- ­ it held the premieres of 21 and Get Smart in the Stomp Showroom, where Wanda Sykes and David Spade perform stand-up when the resident show is dark. The Theatre for the Performing Arts seating configuration for Saturday's nine-deep fight card will be adjusted, with seats placed on the stage and the ring set in front of that stage for an in-the-round feel, sort of.

But with most of the combat-sport energy in Vegas this weekend being usurped by the Rampage Jackson-Forrest Griffin UFC card at Mandalay Bay, Saturday's card is fighting to avoid being lost in the shuffle. That's too bad. My own opinion, not shared by so many sports fans, is a good boxing match beats a good UFC match. The chief reason: boxers, more so than UFC fighters, can more skillfully work their way out of trouble to recover to stay in the fight. I recall Chuck Liddell's second fight against Jackson, where he took one shot to the temple, tumbled to the deck and was swarmed while supine. He had no chance.

That said, Saturday's main event, for the World Boxing Organization junior welterweight title belt, should be a hell of a fight. The bout pits two evenly matched fighters -- Holt is 32-2 with 12 KOs, Torres is 32-1 with 28 KOs ­ in prime condition, and whose first fight ended in a swell of controversy seemingly exclusive to boxing. That bout was held Sept. 7 in Torres' hometown of Barranquilla, Colombia, which, in a remarkably timed coincidence, sits not far from the Colombian jungle where Colombian military officials rescued former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages this week.

In the 11th round of that highly entertaining fight, Holt was leading on two of the three scorecards (the hometown judge had Torres leading by a single point). Holt had already dropped Torres in the sixth, but was waning in the latter rounds and Torres knocked him to the deck with a left hook. Dazed and rubber-legged, Holt attempted to hold on and backpedal around the ring, which had become slick with ice and beverages the crowd had been throwing toward the fighters. The bout was then abruptly stopped by the referee, with Holt in trouble but still defending himself and wailing that he could not gather his footing.

The bettors like Holt, who this afternoon is at minus-250 to take Torres' title. Torres is at plus-210. But this assumes, of course, a dry track.

Notes from PH: Before a couple hundred observes curious to see boxers and briefs, both fighters weighed in at 139 pounds, one pound under the WBO junior-welterweight limit ... The nine-card bill is the limit for the number of bouts on a single card by the Nevada State Athletic Commission ... Pun alert! Ana Julaton, who fights Johanna Mendez on the single women's bout (a six-rounder) is a knockout ... Owing to jingoism, I mean patriotism, today, the PH sports book is giving sports bettors their own little American flags ... PR ace Steve Flynn is handling media relations for this fight. He also reps illusionist Criss Angel, himself known to spark spirited conflict ... PH is hosting a UFC event itself, with the UFC after-party set for Prive on the mezzanine level.