NOTEBOOK \ From Atlantic City

Arroyo’s take: Youngstown native Harry Arroyo, the IBF lightweight champ from 1984-85, traveled to Atlantic City for Saturday’s fight — the first time he’s traveled outside the area to watch a fight. “I’ve known Kelly since he was 12,” Arroyo said. “This is great to see.” Although Arroyo won the title, he still feels like he could have done more with his career if he had better handlers. “But I’m blessed to have done what I did.” He went 40-11 as a pro, starting his career 26-0 and winning the title by beating Charlie “Choo Choo” Brown by TKO in the 14th round April 15, 1984. He successfully defended his title twice before losing by unanimous decision to Jimmy Paul on April 4, 1986. One of the biggest disappointments of his career was not fighting Youngstown’s Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini. “When judgment day comes and I stand before God, I’m going to ask why things happened the way they did,” said Arroyo. Mancini also attended Saturday’s bout.

UFC vs. boxing: Top Rank president Bob Arum is definitely not a fan of mixed martial arts, which has surpassed boxing in popularity in several demographics. “I hate it,” he said of the sport. “It’s horrible. It’s [bleeping] horrible. None of those guys knows how to throw a punch.” The Ultimate Fighting Championships (the most popular mixed martial arts league) has a bigger following than boxing in the most prized demographic: young white males. In fact, boxing skews older in every demographic except Hispanics. UFC has two distinct advantages over boxing, Arum said. One, the talent costs less. “Because the purses aren’t as large, they can put a bigger portion of their revenue into promotion,” Arum said. Two, it’s on Spike TV. UFC fans don’t need to subscribe to HBO or buy pay-per-view to see it. “They were able to break the sport out by putting it on TV for free. Spike TV didn’t have to pay anything at first. When it became popular, then they ended up charging for it. Boxing has to get better exposure than just monthly bouts.” The bouts on ESPN aren’t enough, Arum said. “ESPN pays nothing for those fights and gets nothing in return,” he said. UFC’s biggest challenge will be maintaining popularity once rival leagues spring up, Arum said. “Right now they’ve got a monopoly,” he said. “Once they get some real competition, they’re going to have to pay more for their talent. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.”

Why no SportsCenter? Another thing hurting boxing is the lack of coverage on ESPN’s SportsCenter. When asked about it, Arum said, “Hey, you’re preaching to the choir. But I have no control over what SportsCenter does.” Arum thinks the Internet will be key in publicizing boxing. “The two big Internet sites, ESPN.com and Yahoo.com give tremendous coverage to boxing,” he said. “So many young fight fans get their information from the Internet, and that’s good.” Although some are pushing to get boxing back on network TV, it seems unlikely anything will happen soon. “The old days of selling a fight to a network and the network selling the fight to advertisers are gone,” Arum said.

Joe Scalzo