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(06/12/06 2:32am)
This was one doozy of a retirement party for Bernard Hopkins.\nThe star middleweight ended his boxing career after 18 years and 52 fights with a storybook finish, an upset of light heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver.\n"I'm done, I'm done, I'm done," he said. "I don't need to risk anything else."\nHe risked plenty Saturday.\nAt 41, coming off back-to-back losses, he jumped two weight classes to take on the 175-pound champion in hopes of doing what his idol Sugar Ray Robinson couldn't, win a light heavyweight title.\nThe big night for Hopkins started when his sisters, wife and teachers were brought into the ring in a tribute before a video about his career played on the scoreboard. A who's who of Hollywood and pro sports watched from ringside, with announced spectators including Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Allen Iverson, Edgerrin James, Queen Latifah and Julius Erving.\nAsked by HBO if he would consider coming back for a $20 million payday, Hopkins replied: "I might come out of my grave for that kind of money."\nBut the fighter, who got his start in boxing while in prison and held the middleweight title for 11 years and finished with a flourish, insisted later he was definitely calling it a career.\n"I did what I said I was going to do," he said. "I wanted to make history, then move up and fight the winner of Roy Jones and Antonio Tarver. And although I had to fight Taylor one extra time, that's what happened."\nA 3-1 underdog, Hopkins thwarted Tarver's jab, attacked him with combinations whenever he tried to get close and controlled the tempo from the opening bell.\nHopkins started slowly in his two losses to Jermain Taylor last year, and was determined not to let that happen again. When the bell rang, he bolted from his corner and met Tarver in the middle of the ring, unleashing a flurry of punches before referee Benjy Estevez separated them.\nIt was a sign of things to come.\nPestering Tarver like a gnat, Hopkins forced the action and never stood still long enough for Tarver to connect on one of his signature left crosses.\n"I felt like in the first round, something was wrong," said Tarver (24-4). "I did not have any answers."\nTarver, who'd agreed to pay $250,000 to a charity of Hopkins' choosing if he didn't knock him out in five rounds or less, needed a miracle in the fifth to avoid paying off. He didn't get it.\nInstead, he was the one who went down.\nAfter missing Hopkins with a right, Hopkins (48-4-1) countered with a right lead that caught Tarver flush in the face, knocking him backward. \nEstevez ruled it a knockdown because Tarver's left glove touched the canvas as he struggled to stay on his feet.\nIn the seventh, the pro-Hopkins crowd of 10,200 at Boardwalk Hall broke into shouts of "B-Hop! B-Hop! B-Hop!"\nHopkins stayed in control in the later rounds, waiting for Tarver to swing and then unleashing five- and six-punch combinations as he chased him across the ring.\n"Tarver definitely is a good puncher," said Hopkins. "I can see why he knocked out Roy (Jones), but I never really gave him a clean target to land his punch."\nBy the end, Tarver's right eye was nearly swollen shut, and the other one didn't look much better.\nThe 37-year-old Tarver, who had bulked up to 210 while serving as Sylvester Stallone's on-screen opponent for the upcoming final installment of the "Rocky" series, looked listless and lost. \nEven when it became clear he'd need a knockout to win, he remained tentative.\n"I hope people got their money's worth," he said.
(04/25/05 4:18am)
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- How about Miss Arkansas in a cat fight with Miss Texas? Or Miss Alaska plotting with Miss Tennessee to get Miss Maine voted off the runway? Or a swimsuit contest featuring bikini-clad women walking the runway while covered in leeches?\nFor Miss America, such scenarios would've been unthinkable once, when all it took to win was a fetching smile, a modicum of talent and a tight swimsuit.\nBut Miss America's in for an extreme makeover.\nDropped by two networks as a ratings loser, the pageant is desperately in need of a lifeline of its own, apparently ready to shuck its squeaky-clean demeanor in favor of the snarky negativity that fuels reality TV.\nThe pageant has reluctantly embraced the craze in recent years, tweaking its age-old formula by adding a pop quiz, curtailing the talent competition and interviewing contestants backstage. \nThere is more urgency now, though. Cast off by ABC after a record-low 9.8 million people tuned in for last September's pageant, Miss America is without a TV outlet for the first time in 50 years and is facing the prospect of having no pageant at all in 2005.\nMiss America officials, who have hired talent agency William Morris and made several trips to California to pitch TV producers and executives in recent months, declined repeated requests for comment on the status of their hunt for a new spot on the dial.\n"What we are proposing out in Los Angeles is that we open up the sacred doors of Miss America," Miss America Organization CEO Art McMaster recently told The New York Times.\nWhether the pageant is ready to resort to "Fear Factor"-inspired gross-outs, "Survivor"-style conniving or week-to-week eliminations a la "American Idol" remains to be seen. If the fates of rival Miss USA are any indication, though, future contestants might need strong stomachs more than singing ability.\nIn a "Fear Factor Miss USA" that aired before the Miss USA pageant earlier this month, five bikini-wearing contestants had 55-gallon drums of live worms, fish and fish oil dumped on them during one stunt.\nIs that the future of Miss America?\n"Oh, God, I hope not," said Bob Arnhym, who runs the Miss California Scholarship Pageant. "I think the audience that watches reality TV has a coliseum mentality. They are cheering for the lion, not the gladiator. I don't know at what price we're prepared to pander to that audience. But anything that is degrading to them, or humiliating, or holds them up to public ridicule, none of those things are going to be acceptable."\nFounded in 1921 as a bathing beauty contest on the Atlantic City boardwalk, Miss America took to the air in 1954 and was a ratings darling for decades. It offered a little leg, the trappings of royalty and a live crowning to a viewing public that had almost no other place to ogle pretty, scantily clad young women.\nAt its peak, more than 80 million viewers tuned in to watch Bert Parks crown some small-town unknown and send her down the runway in Convention Hall. But that was before the communications revolution put cable TV, Internet porn and catty reality shows in everyone's homes.\nNow Miss America the TV show isn't able to compete, although competitors Miss USA and Miss Universe are still on the air, thanks in part to being co-owned by NBC and Donald Trump.\nViewers, it seems, would rather see young beauties get down and dirty than listen to them play Chopin or talk about world peace.\nThe "Fear Factor Miss USA" show drew 9.2 million viewers, compared with 8.1 million for Miss USA, which followed it on NBC, according to Nielsen Media Research. It's the third year in a row Miss USA has been preceded by a "Fear Factor Miss USA."\nEach time, the lead-in drew more viewers than the pageant itself.\nSome long-timers, however, would rather see Miss America hang up her sash than resort to such things.\n"If they're looking at that kind of thing to save the program, then forget it," said 68-year-old Lois Elaine Smith-Zoll of Vancouver, Wash., who has been involved in the Miss America system as a volunteer and state pageant judge for 39 years. "That's not what we're about."\nMcMaster has said he'd like to see Miss America become a serial, with several weeks of shows building up to the one where they choose Miss America. The idea: to help viewers get to know the contestants and root for them, which is next to impossible with the pageant airing once a year for two hours on a Saturday night in September.\nPaula Shugart, president of the Miss Universe Organization, said Miss America has suffered because its contestants have become too polished for viewers to relate to.\n"A Miss America has to have this image of being this wholesome, holier-than-thou, up-on-a-pedestal woman. In this day and age of reality TV, when people want the nitty gritty and the foibles, that's diametrically opposed. You really need to get to real women letting their hair down," Shugart said.\nBut persuading a network to devote prime-time spots to a franchise that has proven it can't hold on to viewers -- the pageant has been dropped by two networks in the last eight years -- might not be possible for Miss America.\n"What they've been doing no longer works," said former pageant staffer Angela Osborne, author of "Miss America: The Dream Lives On." "It just can't continue in its present form"
(10/21/04 5:01am)
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- ABC has dropped Miss America, leaving the famous beauty pageant without a network TV outlet for the first time in 50 years.\nThe network, which had carried the annual telecast since 1997 with a series of one-year contracts, notified Miss America Organization officials that they will not pick up the option this year, acting President and CEO Arthur McMaster said Wednesday.\n"We are now free to pursue other parties who have expressed interest in our organization, and we are excited at the limitless opportunities that are now available for us to grow our brand," he said.\nThe move, which comes on the heels of a Sept. 18 pageant that drew a record low 9.8 million viewers, could jeopardize the foundation of a program that grew from an Atlantic City publicity stunt into a TV icon, largely on the strength of the contest and crowning beamed into millions of living rooms each September.\nSince Lee Meriwether was crowned on Sept. 11, 1954 in the first televised pageant, Miss America has grown into a nonprofit corporation that makes available more than $40 million annually in scholarship aid and oversees 52 local pageants.\n"It's certainly an ominous sign," said former CEO Leonard Horn. "Whether or not they can get a contract with another network is going to be very important."\nABC officials didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.\nABC, which took over Miss America after 30-year sponsor NBC lost interest in 1996, has had rocky relations with Miss America officials in recent years, in part because of the sinking ratings.\nMcMaster, who had pressed the network to move Miss America to a weeknight and televise some part of its three nights of preliminary competition, said the pageant was happy to part ways with ABC.\n"There's already been companies that have contacted us and expressed an interest," he said. "This thing's been around for 84 years, and it'll be around for another 84. I'm not going to say I'm not worried, but I think there's much more out there."\nWithout a network, Miss America would lose its chief asset -- a nationally televised spectacle.\nMoreover, the loss deals the Miss America Organization a financial blow. In 2003, ABC paid $5.6 million for the rights to televise it.\n"There's no doubt, TV is the catalyst that keeps this company going. But it's not a one-night-a-year organization. It's a 52-weeks-a-year organization. We want to grow beyond that one night," said McMaster.
(10/31/03 5:13am)
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- The top five stories of a parking garage under construction at a casino collapsed Thursday, sending concrete slabs and metal beams crashing down as workers ran for cover. Four people were killed, about 20 were injured and one was missing, officials said.\nThree of the victims were found dead inside the building and the other died at a hospital, said Michael Shurman, deputy director of emergency management for Atlantic County.\nOne of the bodies was still inside the parking garage more than six hours after the collapse and another person was missing, Shurman said. Authorities, worried about the structure's stability, didn't send rescue crews in right away.\n"There is the real potential for a secondary collapse," Gov. James E. McGreevey said.\nRobert Levy, the city's director of emergency management, said search cameras and dogs were sent into the rubble of the 10-story garage to locate missing workers, and trucks carrying lumber were being brought in to try to shore up the building. He called it "one of the worst collapses Atlantic City has ever seen."\nConstruction workers had been pouring a concrete floor deck when a corner of the top floors collapsed, leaving five layers of concrete and steel sloping downward at a steep angle, said state police Capt. Ed O'Neill\nHarold Simmons, 42, a pipefitter, was on the second floor of the garage when he heard rumbling around 10:40 a.m.\n"It sounded like an earthquake," Simmons said. "The whole building was shaking."\n"You didn't know where to run. I tried to run to a staircase, but the staircase was wiped out. I went to another staircase and that one was wiped out."\nSimmons eventually made it out by following other workers. He said 300 to 400 workers were at the site when the garage floors collapsed.\nThe parking garage supports on one side an 18-story hotel tower for the Tropicana Casino and Resort.
(06/09/03 2:28am)
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- Junior welterweight Arturo Gatti pounded out another thrilling 10-round decision over Micky Ward on Saturday night, closing the book on a fight trilogy that breathed new life into both men's careers.\nGatti, who split a pair of fights with Ward last year, outpunched and outmaneuvered the slower, 37-year-old Ward this time around, overcoming a broken hand and a knockdown to win the rubber match in a unanimous decision.\nWard, a hard-hitting former club fighter with the resiliency of a champion, never succumbed despite a bloody nose, two cuts on his face and a series of exchanges in which he looked like he was about to collapse.\nPeppered by jabs he was too slow to block, Ward was bleeding and in trouble by the end of the third round.\nBut Gatti (36-6) broke his right hand on an uppercut to the hip in that round, and he fought nearly one-handed for several rounds afterward.\nIn the fourth, Ward (38-13) engineered a stunning turnaround, connecting with two lefts and a right to the head that stopped Gatti in his tracks. Ward then hit him with five straight left uppercuts to the body, bringing the roaring crowd of 12,643 in Boardwalk Hall to its feet.\nIn the sixth, Gatti, 31, of Jersey City, N.J., dominated the round but got caught with an overhand right to the top of the head a second before the bell rang and went down.\nBut he recovered again and was never in trouble after that. Not that Ward gave up.\nThe two went after each other the rest of the way, although Ward hit nothing but air with his lunging left hooks and couldn't block Gatti. In the seventh, Gatti landed 61 of 101 power punches, according to punch statistics kept at ringside.\nWard, who had promised to retire after the fight, made good on the vow afterward, saying he was through with boxing.\n"He hit me with some shots early on that took the steam out of me," said Ward, of Lowell, Mass.\nBoth fighters were taken to Atlantic City Medical Center for treatment. Ward complained of a right hand injury and a ringside physician who examined him after the fight said he thought it was broken.\nJudges George Hill and Joe Pasquale scored it 96-93 and Luis Rivera had it 97-92. Gatti won on the AP's card 96-93.\n"I knew that he was coming to fight," said Gatti, who hugged Ward and shared a bottle of water with him in the ring after the decision was announced. "He's a great champion. Anyone else would have quit. He's got a lot of heart."\nThe rousing non-title bout was a fitting climax to the three-fight series, which started last year with Ward knocking down Gatti en route to a 10-round decision in the first.\nOn Nov. 23, Gatti got his revenge, posting a unanimous decision over Ward after dazing him with a knockdown in the third.\nWhen the 10th round was about to begin Saturday night, ring announcer Michael Buffer noted the significance of the finish, as if anyone needed reminding: "This is the 10th -- make that the 30th -- and final round."\n"It was an epic trilogy and a tremendous fight that hearkened back to the first one," said Lou DiBella, Ward's manager. "Tonight is as good as it gets. These 30 rounds will live in boxing history"
(08/01/02 3:51am)
ASBURY PARK, N.J. -- The sun was shining. The surfers were riding the waves. The beach and boardwalk were packed. Matt and Katie were in bare feet. The Boss was in his element. \nAnd his fans -- some 10,000 of them -- were in hog heaven. \nGlory days, indeed: Bruce Springsteen headlined a "Today" show broadcast Tuesday from the hard-luck Jersey shore city where he made his name, performing live on a program that showcased some of his home state's greatest hits. \nSpringsteen, 52, played an acoustic set in Convention Hall to warm up, then returned with his nine-member band for a miniconcert that was carried live on "Today." \nThe appearance coincided with the release of "The Rising," the new CD from Springsteen and his E Street Band. \nThrongs of die-hard Springsteen fans flocked to the boardwalk, some lining up more than a day early for the nationally televised three-hour show, which began at 7 a.m. \nAmong them was Gary Horst, 46, of Richmond, Va., who draped a fading blue 27-year-old "Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band" T-shirt over a boardwalk railing in hopes of catching "Today" cameras. \n"I drove up for the chance to see Bruce, in Asbury Park, on the 'Today' show. How much better can it get?"\nThe show, co-hosted by Katie Couric, Matt Lauer and weatherman Al Roker, included a taped interview with Springsteen and live segments on the beach that focused on surfing, sand-sculpting and cooking New Jersey-style. \nAtlantic City firefighter John Gowdy, a renowned sand sculptor, demonstrated his craft on a 12-foot tall sandcastle he had already erected on the beach, complete with "Today" logo. \nAuthor-chef Chris Styler of South Orange showed off New Jersey cuisine. His creations included grilled bluefish, grilled corn and Jersey tomato salad. \nThe show also spotlighted new efforts to breathe life into Asbury Park and its decrepit waterfront,which are the focus of a $1.2 billion redevelopment plan. \nAbout two dozen boats, surfers and personal watercraft users took in the scene from the ocean, about 100 yards from shore. \nThe beach crowds cheered and waved signs whenever a camera pointed in their direction. "They're a very easygoing crowd," said police Capt. Mark Kinmon. "We haven't had any troubles."\nThere was some good-natured mischief, though. \nCouric, reading her script to herself as she awaited the end of a commercial break, was hit on the back of the head with a beach ball thrown from the crowd. Hands on hips, she whirled around, glaring at the crowd in mock anger. \nWhile Couric, Lauer and Roker were on the beach, Springsteen was inside Convention Hall warming up. The 2,500-seat arena, which has no air conditioning, was sweltering hot, but fans gladly endured the discomfort to hear a solo Springsteen play acoustic versions of two oldies and a new song: "Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street," "For You" and "Waitin' on a Sunny Day." \nLater, with the band in tow and the cameras on, he played a 33-minute set that, except for "Glory Days," was all material from the new record. \nThe event and the thousands of fans who came for it transformed the Asbury Park waterfront into a bustling concert scene. \nA Howard Johnson's cafe on the boardwalk closed for eating, instead serving drinks through a window. "Too many people. We couldn't handle it," said bartender Tommy Anderson. \nThe cafe served 20,000 people -- total -- on Monday and Tuesday, he said.\n\n
(05/30/02 3:56am)
Steven Campbell will be there to honor his wife when the last stretcher is carried out of ground zero. But Thursday's ceremony at the World Trade Center site will ring hollow for him and others who have yet to find their loved ones' remains.\nThey are losing hope of ever having a funeral, a burial, a grave for their children to visit.\n"As a human being, you're taught you have the funeral, you have the body, you have a place to go and mourn," the 36-year-old New Yorker said. "I don't have any of that."\nThe ceremony marking the end of the sorrowful, 8-month cleanup begins at 10:29 a.m. -- the moment when the second tower collapsed on Sept. 11. An empty, flag-draped stretcher symbolizing the remains not recovered or identified will be carried from the spot. Thousands of victims' relatives and rescue workers are expected to attend.\n"To not have anything recovered, it's just such an empty feeling," said Jennifer Tarantino, 32, of Bayonne, N.J., whose husband died in the attacks. "It's so final. Your husband goes to work one day and that's it, you never see him again."\nKenneth Tarantino, 39, a currency trader with Cantor Fitzgerald, worked on the 107th floor of the north tower. His remains have not been identified.\nHis widow is not giving up hope. Maybe the medical examiner's office will call and say it has found his remains. She has already taken 4-year-old Kenneth Jr. and 6-month-old Jason to have swabs taken from their mouths for use in DNA testing.\n"Once the city or the medical examiner tells me 'That's it, we did our best, we're done,' that's when I'll be able to say, 'I hung in there, this is how it's going to be,'" she said.\nBeverly Eckert, 50, of Stamford, Conn., said that when that stretcher is carried out on Thursday, "for me, that's going to represent my husband, Sean."\nEckert was on the telephone with her husband, Sean Rooney, 50, a vice president for risk management services at Aon Corp., as he tried to make his way from the roof of the south tower.\n"I'd prefer right now that there are no remains identified, so I don't have to think about what the particular remains found mean as to the way he died," Eckert said. "I'd prefer, in my mind, to somehow think that there was this total instantaneous disintegration and that his remains haven't been sitting in a refrigerated trailer all this time."\nOf the 2,823 people believed killed in the attack, 1,092 have been identified, about 300 through DNA alone. About 19,550 body parts have been recovered, some through the sifting process at a Staten Island landfill.\nNew York City officials said the sifting will continue and the identification process will go on for months. Those parts that cannot be identified will be retained, in case new technology makes it possible someday.\nFamilies have held memorial services and planted trees in lieu of funerals and burials.\nFour days after the attack, Eckert held a memorial service in her sister's back yard in Buffalo, N.Y., where Eckert and Rooney had been married 21 years before.\nTarantino held a candlelight Mass two weeks after the attacks. But she desperately hopes for some remains, so her sons have someplace to go to visit the father only one of them knew. Friends of her husband planted a tree in his memory, along with a plaque, across the street from the Bayonne, N.J., ballfields he played on as a child.\n"My son leaves flags and flowers there. I think it helps him a little bit," she said.\nCampbell similarly wants real, physical evidence of Jill Marie Campbell, 31, for himself and their 18-month-old son, Jacob.\n"Someday, I'll have to answer 'Where's my mother?' I don't know how to answer that question. There's the reality of what's happened," Campbell said, "but there's still the question of where is she"