A weekend celebrating a boxing icon has sparked a bit of a Las Vegas mystery.
Muhammad Ali drew heavyweights from the sports and entertainment world for a spectacular birthday celebration. A special live auction during the event sparked a ferocious bidding war over the first pair of boxing gloves Ali wore during a Vegas championship fight.
We know someone with a lot of money took home the gloves, but how much they bid is a bit of a brainteaser.
Lorenzo Fertitta, co-owner of the UFC, was originally declared the winning bidder of the gloves worn by Ali in his 1965 fight against Floyd Patterson. Fertitta, who also runs the Station Casinos group, reportedly bid an impressive $750,000.
A few minutes later a different tale was told.
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones had jumped into the bidding war and put up a stunning $1 million bid for the historic piece of sports memorabilia. Jones has been sweet talking boxing big wigs in hopes of bringing more megafights to his massive Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
So Jones won the gloves?
Nope, much like the Cowboys' late season performance the last few years, he appears to have come up just a few yards, or in this case dollars, short. USA Today's Jon Saraceno reported on Twitter the 69-year-old NFL owner was outbid by Fertitta who put up a mind-boggling $1.1 million for the 46-year-old gloves.
Norm Clarke, the veteran gossip king of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, was unable to sort out all the details by late Sunday night. Pursuing this further, boxing legend Bob Arum, according to the Review-Journal said, "Anything for charity and 'I love the UFC!'" That inspired Fertitta to tweet an appreciative response to his bitter rival.
Clarke reported that while it appears the UFC's co-owner was the winning bidder, whether or not he really paid $1,100,000 for the Ali gloves remains a conundrum.
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