A little pageantry is baked into all entertaining sports. As Trenova points out, having a rave at a fight is \u201clike \u2018Mo Bamba\u2019 being played at a football game.\u201d But as someone who, prior to this reporting, had never seen anyone get punched in the face, let me attest: This isn\u2019t football. This is a different kind of spectacle entirely. The one that filled Madison Square Garden in the 70s, when it was Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier II boxing, and drew 19th century crowds to bare-knuckle brawls in anonymous fields outside London. In 1500s Japan, it went down on the hard-packed clay of the dohy\u014d. It was the hottest ticket in the Roman Empire. Before that, it was animals. It\u2019s the world\u2019s oldest pastime. And once again we\u2019ve returned to two dudes in a ring. There\u2019s just something about it.<\/p>\n
***<\/strong><\/p>\n The gallery room at Manhattan\u2019s Classic Cars Club on Pier 76 is called The Stable. It houses the club\u2019s troop of steeds: the 1969 Chevy Camaro SS, the Lamborghini Hurac\u00e1n Performante, the Ferrari 328, et cetera, any of which can be checked out by dues-paying members for a joyride up the Hudson River. But tonight, the cars have been wheeled black to the edges of the room to make space for what looks like an upmarket dinner theater in the round.<\/p>\n Only it\u2019s not exactly a stage at the center of the soaring 8,000-square foot space. Drenched in red and blue lights, flanked with tables where champagne buckets sweat, it\u2019s a regulation-size boxing ring. Five or six times a year, the club hosts a fight night for members and their guests. The ringside tables go for $1300. The dry-aged ribeyes go for $145. They sell a lot of steaks on fight night.<\/p>\n \u201cOur members have an interest in escapism in cars,\u201d Michael Prichinello, the club\u2019s co-founder, told me. \u201cWe’re racers. Motorsport is our go-to.\u201d He dreamt up fight night as an extension of that inclination, appropriate for a clientele who like their entertainment high-risk and high-gloss. \u201cBoxing is quite glamorous,\u201d he mused. FaceTiming a few weeks ahead of the event, he looked like a reclining philosopher, gazing offscreen in a turtleneck: \u201cWhen someone is risking life and limb or a particular level of safety, the spectacle is just always higher, and I think that the glamour goes along with that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A little pageantry is baked into all entertaining sports. As Trenova points out, having a rave at a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":455930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,392,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,8935,14979,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,1940],"class_list":{"0":"post-455929","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-culture","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-newyork","13":"tag-newyorkcity","14":"tag-ny","15":"tag-nyc","16":"tag-onecolumn","17":"tag-textbelowcentergridwidth","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa","24":"tag-web"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115741604361989486","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}