Remembering glory days of boxing at the Trump Plaza

The two push-button house phones outside the main entrance of the vacant Trump Plaza hotel in Atlantic City remain. A sign outlining access rules concludes with "Trespassers will be prosecuted."

They may as well also take down the "Valet Only" sign. Nobody's allowed in the driveway. There's a big fight next door at Boardwalk Hall on Saturday, Bernard Hopkins against Sergey Kovalev for the light-heavyweight title. There will be a strong crowd. It just won't be quite like the old days, certainly not next door.

"It's so sad," said Chuck Betson, who hosts a sports-talk radio show every night at the Shore on WOND-AM (1400). "That was the mecca."

Betson was referring to the Trump Plaza's being shuttered in September.

"June 27, 1988, was like having a Super Bowl here in Atlantic City," said Betson, then a sports columnist for the Atlantic City Press, referring to the heavyweight title fight between Mike Tyson and Michael Spinks, both undefeated. "I haven't seen anything like it since then. . . . That whole era, with Trump Plaza at the center of it, and being able to funnel them right into Boardwalk Hall without even having them leave, and after the fight, they could come right back."

He's a real Hopkins fan - as a fighter, a man, and a historical sports figure - and this is a big event for Atlantic City, Betson said. "It's going to put people in the hall on a November night when nobody would have been there. It's a huge event."

It's just that the casino next door remains a monument to another brief time.

"The night of the [Tyson-Spinks] fight, they had a party at Trump Plaza," Betson said over lunch Wednesday afternoon in Somers Point. "The first couple that walked out of the party was Sean Penn and Madonna. Sean Penn kicked [a television cameraman] in the shin."

Betson said he knew a hostess at Maximilian's restaurant inside Trump Plaza - "She had her back turned. She said she heard this man come up and say, 'Hey, Sug, can you get us a table?' It was Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty."

There were many other big fights, of course: George Foreman and Arturo Gatti fought there and Roberto Duran fought to a split decision over Iran Barkley in 1989 - "an unbelievable fight, on a snowy night. They tried to get them to postpone the fight."

In January '88, Tyson had taken out Larry Holmes in a fourth-round technical knockout, also at Convention Hall, as Boardwalk Hall was then called. "He beat up Larry Holmes," Betson said. "Oh, that was scary."

That June, CNN's camera truck was on the Boardwalk basically because of one man. The Spinks fight was the 35th of Tyson's career, and his 10th in Atlantic City. He was still only 21 years old.

"Here's the thing with Tyson. It was never boring. You talk about pure unfettered raw power," Betson said. "Those early days of Tyson, before he was poisoned by all that . . . it was incredible, when he would walk in the ring, it was like, there was death and destruction before your very eyes. It was a great image of what violence is, and danger.

"The night he walked in against Spinks, [Spinks] thought, I was this far away from the devil himself. People said Spinks was scared. I don't know if he was scared. He knew he was in for a tough night."

If Beatty and Nicholson and the rest of the 21,785 were disappointed by the Spinks fight, that was on them. It lasted 91 seconds. Tyson first hit Spinks with a body shot that dropped him to one knee, the first time in his career that Spinks was off two feet. After the standing eight, Spinks nodded he was OK, and four seconds later he was back on the canvas. That moment will forever be the high point of the Tyson era. (Tyson is a year younger than the 49-year-old Hopkins.)

More great heavyweights couldn't have kept the phones ringing at the Trump Plaza, or vice versa. But there were parallels in their fall. Betson said he's always asking people what happened to the great young American fighters, especially the heavyweights. He knows some have gone toward UFC. But not all.

"I've had a million people tell me," Betson said. "They're playing linebacker in the NFL."