One hour away.

By Joe Scalzo (Contact)

Published February 21, 2009

Dallas Vargas (22-4, 16 KOs) won by TKO over Kevin Engel (15-2) in the third round of the final undercard bout. Vargas has John Loew (Jack's son) and John Hutter in his corner. Hutter and Loew are trainers at the Southside Boxing Club, Pavlik's club.

This place is packed. As Pavlik said all week, "I wish we had a bigger arena." The Chevy Centre is a terrific place, but I'm not a huge fan of waiting in line for 10 minutes to go to the bathroom. Not surprisingly, the line for the women isn't quite as long, since it's about 80/20 men-to-women ratio.

 I waited another 10 minutes to buy a $3 hot dog. The people behind me looked around said, "This crowd's kind of grungy, isn't it?"

Ah, Youngstown.

 Boxer Roy Jones and former OSU QB Kirk Herbstreit, now an ESPN analyst, are both here. I have a feeling a lot of guys are up in the press box, not wanting to pose for a million photos ringside.

Sylvester Stallone is supposedly here, although I haven't seen him.

We just had the national anthem and this crowd went nuts. The Cotto fight will be on the screens in a few minutes with Pavlik set to fight around 11.  I've been to one other sellout here -- the Mahoning Valley Thunder's first game -- and it doesn't compare to this. I'm guessing this place is about 90 percent full right now and the other 10 percent are probably out in the lobby.