Yesterday, UT Chancellor Francisco Sigueroa dropped a bomb on El Paso when he announced that UT didn't think that having the Chavez Jr./Andy Lee fight at the Sun Bowl was such a great idea because of "security concerns".  What a bowlful of BS!

Last night on a special edition of Darren's Sunday night Xtra, a couple of theories were thrown around about what the heck caused Cigarroa to come to the conclusion he did (I'll include the link on Facebook once KVIA puts it on their website).  On Mike and Tricia Mornings this morning, we talked about the cancellation and let listeners vent on Facebook.  There is even an online petition being circulated to help keep the fight at the Sun Bowl.

Clearly, this is a pretty big story. 

Cancelling the fight not only means that we won't see the estimated 2 million dollars in economic impact from the fight - it also means that people who are interested in bringing an event to El Paso might think twice and not do it if they Google El Paso and find out that our state's own University System thinks the Sun Bowl is a dangerous place!  Can you imagine what the parent's of potential students are going to think when they Google UTEP and find this story?  "Sure, honey, I'm going to put you on a bus to UTEP to play basketball, football, softball, or just go to school." 

Not happening if I was an out-of-town parent. 

It's bad enough that we have Governor Perry telling people that bombs go off in downtown El Paso, now we have the Chancellor of the UT System telling people that we can't even hold a safe event in our Sun Bowl?

UTEP and the boxing promoter got blindsided by this decision.  They are just trying to react to Cigarroa's stupid decision to stop the fight.  My own theory is this:  there are a lot of very wealthy ex-UT students all over the state, and I think some of them got together and said, "Why is El Paso getting HBO and the Chavez, Jr./Lee fight?  They're just a bunch of Mexicans.  Let's get some money together and have the Chancellor shut the fight down so it can be moved to a city that says "Texas", not "El Chuco". 

And the theory that poor tickets sales contributed to this is nonsense.  Tickets hadn't even gone on sale.  The fight promoters have done fights before in El Paso and they know how the city buys tickets last minute.  This was not a small time fight - it was going to be pretty big potatoes.  Was.

I love El Paso, but I heard a lot of crap being slung at it during the 5 years I lived in Austin back in the late 90's.  At the time I was married to a lawyer who worked at the Court of Criminal Appeals, and the s**t that came out of those very educated, very liberal mouths about El Paso would curl your hair.  People really think we are Little Mexico.  I was even told by one female lawyer on the Court that she was surprized to find I spoke English with no accent!  The blatant racism behind big Texas smiles was shocking.

I think we are going to find out that there was a back room deal made with the Chancellor and some wealthy ex-UTer's, and that's why we lost the fight.  I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am.

More From 93.1 KISS FM