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Tom Steinert-Threlkeld

One Fight Was Enough

This came from the you-can’t-make-this-up department of around-the-clock life in the first decade of the 21st Century.

Fight fans are still arguing over the outcome of the much-ballyhooed “greatest fight of all time” between fan favorite Oscar de la Hoya and 30-year-old upstart and promising-to-retire Floyd Mayweather Jr.

But that debate hadn’t even made it until dawn Sunday before HBO itself had upstaged the prize fight that it had backed and hoped would break the 2 million-purchase milestone for a non-heavyweight prize fight on pay-per-view.

That’s because HBO’s own chief executive, Chris Albrecht, found himself in jail at around 3 a.m., according to Bloomberg News, for allegedly getting “engaged in physical altercation” of his own. With a woman. Outside the MGM Grand. Which Mayweather and de la Hoya had a few hours earlier livened up and then vacated.

Albrecht spent roughly 12 hours, from early accounts, in jail on what should have been a day of basking in boxing success. The de la Hoya-Mayweather fight had been so close, a rematch appears inevitable.

Instead, the fight that was getting the most attention as The Cable Show put on by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association got under way Sunday was Albrecht’s own. Not the one between the two professional pugilists.

Now, let’s not throw the book at Chris Albrecht. Let’s be mindful that he is innocent of beating up on anyone at this point. Nothing has been proved in court.

Still, Las Vegas police don’t throw people in jail just for practice. Whatever behavior led to Albrecht’s arrest you’d have to believe stood out from the normal out-of-the-ordinary behavior on a night that mixed both a highly publicized prize fight and widely celebrated Cinco de Mayo festivities in the burg known by visitors and non-visitors alike as Sin City Indeed, this scribe, nursing a broken collarbone, found himself nearly bowled over by advancing crowds in the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino after the fight let out. The idea that walkways were for sharing were not on the agenda of these wound-up partiers.

But that’s way minor compared to what happened to Albrecht. Here’s hoping he has a full explanation for what occurred. And that no physical contact between he and any woman was involved.

Still, you have to wonder what good could possibly be going on at 3 a.m. in the morning in the first place. The fight – the one between de la Hoya and Mayweather – ended well before midnight. There was no good reason for Albrecht or anyone of his stature to be attracting the attention of men in blue halfway through the night.

Here’s hoping there’s a full, clear and easy-to-understand explanation forthcoming from the man whose network has made a reputation and decades worth of profit on the fight game.

Given what we’ve seen in the Duke University lacrosse case, most recently, Albrecht should be given all benefits of the doubt. And if charges are dropped, they’re dropped.

At the same time, let’s trust there’s no rematch coming between Albrecht, any woman or any one.

“Altercations” belong inside the ropes. Not outside.

Albrecht likely would be the first to acknowledge that.