Caesars Palace

LAS VEGAS -- No one has blinked yet in the heavyweight battle pitting casino giants Caesars Palace and the MGM Grand, and sports cable networks HBO and Showtime over a coveted Nov. 4 fight dateFor the moment, Caesars Palace plans to stage Riddick Bowe-Evander Holyfield III that night. Their two previous encounters were both highly successful -- artistically andfinancially.Less than a mile a mile down The Strip, The Mirage has scheduled former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson in his second comeback bout against a yet unnamed opponent.

What's that old sports saying about the quarterback getting the girl? Over the weekend, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo was soaking up rays and kicking back in Mexico with Jessica Simpson, an event captured in a series of still images by the paparazzi (who these days might be armed with nothing more than a cell phone).

Just 24 hours after putting injured Mike Tyson on hold, heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield's advisers have offered a late November title fight to unranked Francesco Damiani, of Italy, at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.As of last night, Damiani had not accepted the offer from Holyfield's promoter, Dan Duva. Damiani (27-1, 23 KOs) has been idle since losing his World Boxing Organization crown to Ray Mercer in Atlantic City last January.Holyfield pushed for a championship match next month after his scheduled Nov. 8 showdown with Tyson was postponed indefinitely when the former champion suffered a rib injury in training, Oct. 8.Efforts to reschedule the $100 million fight before Tyson's pending Jan. 27 trial in Indianapolis for alleged rape of an 18-year-old beauty pageant contestant proved futile.

Having already established the popularity of its own World Series, the poker world is now rolling out a made-for-television version of March Madness. Hijacking the NCAA's format for crowning men's and women's basketball champions, NBC is backing the second National Heads-up Poker Championship being held March 4 to 6 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The winner will get $500,000 and the total prize pool will be $1.5 million with NBC adding more than $200,000 to the pot. A field of 64 players - familiar poker professionals and celebrities with an acumen for the game - will vie in one-on-one contests building to a best-of-three finals.

LAS VEGAS -- In their first major decision as Mike Tyson's new co-managers, John Horne and Rory Holloway named little-known Philadelphia trainer Willie Rush to oversee the former heavyweight champion's comeback.Rush, 56, was a journeyman heavyweight who helped develop Meldrick Taylor into a gold-medal winner in the 1984 Olympics. He rejoined Taylor last year for his unsuccessful title challenge against super-lightweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez."Mike worked with Rush in two or three of his amateur fights in the '80s, and he remembered it as a good experience," said Horne.

George Foreman, who became odd man out in the Evander Holyfield-Mike Tyson heavyweight championship bout negotiations, has filed a $100 million breach-of-contract suit against Holyfield, the champion's promoter, Dan Duva, and his manager, Shelly Finkel.The former heavyweight champion also is seeking an injunction to stop the scheduled Nov. 8 title match at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for today in Houston.Leading the attack against Holyfield, the undisputed champion, is promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank Inc. Arum says he has a contract signed by Duva on Holyfield's personal stationery, offering Foreman a rematch, Nov. 8, at the same terms he had received for extending Holyfield to the 12-round limit in Atlantic City, N.J., on April 19."

NEW YORK -- Rock Newman mapped out plans yesterday for Riddick Bowe's next two defenses of his International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Association titles and announced that Bowe's anticipated rematch with former champion Evander Holyfield has been put on hold until Sept. 10.Newman, not to be upstaged by rival Don King, who was holding a cross-town news conference to promote the Lennox Lewis-Tony Tucker heavyweight match in Las Vegas on May 8 for the World Boxing Council title, said the Holyfield bout at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas would be delayed to avoid possible conflicts with the NBA Finals in June and the baseball All-Star Game in July.

After an all-day meeting in New York between promoters Dan Duva and Don King reached an impasse over a new date for the postponed Nov. 8 Evander Holyfield-Mike Tyson title fight in Las Vegas, Tyson was told to wait his turn for a chance to regain his crown from undisputed champion Evander Holyfield.Duva said Holyfield will defend his title against a yet-unnamed opponent on an unspecified date at a site to be determined. However, Duva did say the bout, to be announced in a few days, would be on Home Box Office rather than pay-per-view.

Only in Las VegasIn an outdoor desert arena where the biggest fights in the world are held, a hockey game broke out Friday night.The glittering lights of the Las Vegas Strip presented a strange but striking background, as the Los Angeles Kings met the New York Rangers in an exhibition game outside the posh Caesars Palace casino-hotel.The first outdoor game in NHL history took place in evening temperatures in the mid-1980s, despite a snafu earlier in the day and warm rain that turned much of the specially constructed ice rink into a sea of puddles.

What's that old sports saying about the quarterback getting the girl? Over the weekend, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo was soaking up rays and kicking back in Mexico with Jessica Simpson, an event captured in a series of still images by the paparazzi (who these days might be armed with nothing more than a cell phone).

LAS VEGAS -- Dennis Kelley, a nurse from Pittsburgh, came prepared for Super Bowl Sunday at Caesars Palace. Kelley had his Ben Roethlisberger jersey. He wore his gold football pants. He even pulled on his throwback Steelers leather helmet. And he had a pillow. If you want a good perch to watch the Super Bowl here, you better have a game plan. Kelley's strategy was to get to the Caesars Palace sports and race book, one of Vegas' premier spots to watch the game, early enough to save seats for his fiancee and her aunt.

A Las Vegas-based casino company says it has long had a deal to run a slot machine operation at Maryland's Rosecroft Raceway should state legislators decide to legalize such gambling, according to court papers. The claim is at the heart of a lawsuit that the company, Park Place Entertainment, has filed against the owners of Rosecroft for allegedly trying to renege on the agreement. The suit, which seeks $100 million in damages, illustrates the keen interest in getting the right to open a slots emporium at Rosecroft.

LAS VEGAS - On Jan. 1, 2000, the story goes, Celine Dion, exhausted from touring and wanting to be a stay-at-home wife and mother, came to Las Vegas with her manager-husband and 250 of their family and friends. The couple renewed their wedding vows. They also saw O, the Cirque du Soleil spectacular on water at the Bellagio, and so moved and flabbergasted was Dion that she came to an inevitable conclusion: She wanted one for herself. She's getting one. In A New Day, which is what her new Vegas extravaganza is called, Dion, strapped to a harness, soars 50 feet in the air, to the top of the gargantuan proscenium, as she belts out the love ballad "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face."

Celine Dion speaks of her epiphany. Not the recent birth of her first child or the career rocket of the Titanic soundtrack in 1999. The epiphany arrived two years ago as she sat in a Las Vegas casino. "It changed my life and my entire way of thinking about performances on stage." And, it turns out, the moment may also reshape the life of the evolving entertainment scene in the high-rolling desert city. Dion, who stepped away from the public concert stage on New Year's Eve 1999 to begin the role of new mother, has agreed to an unprecedented pact that will see her perform five nights a week for 40 weeks a year over three years at Caesar's Palace.

A lot of things get blowed up real good in "The Strip," and if that's the height of what you expect from television, then, friend, welcome to hog heaven.There are major explosions in tonight's series premiere. There are also, as befits the series' Las Vegas setting, plenty of buxom babes in bikinis, gaudy neon, flashy cars and high-rolling gamblers. There's an evil, leering man with a foreign accent and a beautiful woman tied up and getting slapped around. Throw in throbbing music and stars who don't talk so much as quip, and you've got a handle on this brain-dead mess from executive producer Joel Silver, who specializes in keeping things moving so fast on screen that no one really thinks too much about what's actually happening.

You may want to check out all that jazz on ABC tonight."Roots: The Gift" (1 p.m.-3 p.m., WBAL, Channel 11) -- LeVar Burton and Louis Gossett Jr. are reunited in a "Roots" off-shoot, as Kunta Kinte and Fiddler are asked to help runaway slaves escape to freedom on Christmas Eve."Caesar's Palace 30th Anniversary Celebration" (8 p.m.-10 p.m., WMAR, Channel 2) -- A gaggle of ABC stars, including Drew Carey, Craig T. Nelson, Suzanne Somers, Joely Fisher and Craig T. Nelson, serve as hosts of this tribute to the Las Vegas showplace that's seen everything from heavyweight fights to joint performances by Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett to Evel Knievel unsuccessfully trying to jump his motorcycle over a fountain.

The executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission has volunteered to serve as a peacemaker to head off another possible heavyweight boxing conflict March 16, between cable TV powers Time-Warner and Viacom, the parent of Showtime."

The executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission has volunteered to serve as a peacemaker to head off another possible heavyweight boxing conflict March 16, between cable TV powers Time-Warner and Viacom, the parent of Showtime."

LAS VEGAS -- No one has blinked yet in the heavyweight battle pitting casino giants Caesars Palace and the MGM Grand, and sports cable networks HBO and Showtime over a coveted Nov. 4 fight date in this gambling capital.For the moment, Caesars Palace plans to stage Riddick Bowe-Evander Holyfield III that night. Their two previous encounters were both highly successful -- artistically andfinancially.Less than a mile a mile down The Strip, The Mirage has scheduled former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson in his second comeback bout against a yet unnamed opponent, although Buster Mathis Jr. is the fighter most often heard.