Columnist Steve Carp: It still was a great sports weekend

IT WAS BEING billed as "The Great Sports Weekend" in New York City. And on the surface, who could argue?

You had a horse going for the Triple Crown of thoroughbred racing. You had a world heavyweight championship fight. You had the hottest team in baseball home for three games, even though the competition was of triple-A caliber.

It was old-time excitement in New York City, the kind you used to see in the 1950s and '60s, when sports like boxing and horse racing still meant something special.

And while Belmont Park delivered big-time with a thrilling head-bobbing finish between Real Quiet and Victory Gallop in the Belmont Stakes in front of 80,000-plus, Madison Square Garden lay silent and dark. While fans flocked to a packed Yankee Stadium to see the sorry Florida Marlins get squished three straight by the Bronx Bombers, the world's most famous arena was dormant.

Boxing has not been kind to the Garden this decade. What was once the mecca of the sport has become a bad, distasteful joke, not to mention a dangerous place when Andrew Golota was in the house throwing low blows.

But that didn't deter the folks who run the Garden. They keep dusting themselves off after hitting the canvas and keep trying to answer the bell.

They were headed for the mat again Saturday when fate intervened and called off the WBA heavyweight title fight between Evander Holyfield and Henry Akinwande. The latter tested positive for hepatitis B and the New York State Athletic Commission pulled the plug.

Given the verdict, you would think there would be all sorts of upset people. But the only ones who were bumming were the fighters, who didn't get paid because the show didn't go on.

Nobody at the Garden was crying, that's for sure. Not when only 4,000 tickets were sold to a venue which seats nearly 20,000 for boxing. Instead of losing several million on its latest adventure in fisticuffs, the Garden wound up cutting its losses to the tune of $100,000 on a fight card that almost was doomed from the start.

You had two boxers declared unfit to fight because of illness. Another fighter was banned from the ring because she was pregnant. And the geriatric Roberto Duran was looking at handing over his purse to the IRS had he stepped into the ring.

While promoter Don King appeared genuinely sorry over the proceedings, he probably wasn't crying either. He has enough problems of his own in a Manhattan courtroom as he battles charges of insurance fraud. And if it meant his fighter Akinwande doesn't get a shot at the title at some point, he can live with that.

Bigger names than Akinwande have been used and abused by King. Besides, what's one more lawsuit? Akinwande can take a number and head to the back of the litigious line.

But it still was a great weekend. With the fight being canceled, it meant saving $25 trying to park by the Garden. It freed up the evening to go to dinner with friends in Chinatown. The mushroom chicken at Yip's on Mott Street has never been better.

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