Boxing Card at Pond Gets Favorable Review : Fights: Aside from some melees outside ring, 12,479 saw three world title bouts and competitive non-title fight.

Other than a few scary incidents, The Pond’s public relations director John Nicoletti called the building’s first boxing venture a success.

Three world title fights and a competitive and an attractive non-title fight between junior lightweight Genaro Hernandez and Jorge Paez drew 12,479 boxing fans to The Pond Friday night.

“We’re excited we were able to draw so many fans,” Nicoletti said. “It was an extremely enthusiastic crowd. It simply added to the mystique of this facility. We drew a large number of fans that normally wouldn’t have gone to this building. The largely Hispanic crowd are people that may not have had an interest in this building before, but this was right up their alley.”

Unfortunately, some fans chose to stage their own fights in the stands. Between approximately 9:15-9:30, four skirmishes broke out--one of them escalated into a near-death experience for one fan. A wrestling match in the first row of the upper concourse left a fan hanging over the railing as terrified spectators looked on.

But before the fan could be thrown over the railing, security personnel intervened.

“Given the large number of people and an unknown audience, we doubled the size of security for that evening,” Nicoletti said. “I give credit to Staff Pro (security) and the Anaheim Police Department for quick response in all those cases. When all you have is four incidents in a matter of 15 minutes, I think it was an extremely positive evening.

“We put together too good of a card. The bouts were all going over eight rounds. You have people in the building for over five hours and people were starting to get a little restless.”

Forum Boxing, which promoted the card, said it was generally pleased with its first Pond experience.

“My main concern was the fans,” Forum Boxing public relations director John Beyrooty said. “I knew we would draw pretty well, but I wanted them to behave. The Forum fans are accustomed to watching big fights. This was the first time for a lot of fans there. It’s almost impossible not to have a scuffle break out with an event of high emotion like that.”

Nicoletti and Beyrooty both said the future of boxing at The Pond is promising.

“The quality and the popularity make a boxing a strong possibility on returning to The Pond,” Nicoletti said. “A fight involving Genaro would be an excellent match for this building, whether it be against (Rafael) Ruelas or (Oscar) De La Hoya. There’s no reason why that fight couldn’t take place at The Pond. We would settle for quality versus quantity. We would be happy with four to six major boxing events per year.”