Casino Stars
The majority of celebrities and megastars that have for years associated themselves with the worlds biggest casinos, tend to have only minor involvement with the actual games. Of course, professional poker players such as ‘Amarillo Slim’, and ‘Stu The Kid Ungar’ have risen to infamy and notoriety over the years for their major successes in casinos worldwide – the World Series of Poker is annually held in Las Vegas, and the poker cognoscenti regard the pair as luminaries of the game for their successive wins.
The ‘Las Vegas Hilton’ perhaps most exemplifies the array of stars from various fields that have affiliated themselves with casinos in recent years. Casino come hotels, especially the ‘Hilton’, have always reaped the benefits of celebrity ‘residencies’, particularly singers, who will perform in the casino for a vast amount of successive dates, generating not only enormous revenue for the establishment, but global publicity. Barbara Streisand and Barry Manilow are two of the most desirable and successful ‘casino stars’, and even Elvis Presley played fifty-eight sold out shows at the Hilton in 1969, breaking all previous box-office records.
Boxing has also staged many of its greatest fights in Las Vegas, most notably at the ‘MGM Grand’ and the ‘Hilton’ – often bringing together worldwide sporting stars with the worlds largest casinos. Lennox Lewis, Mike Tyson, and Evander Holyfield have all fought for World Titles in Las Vegas. Muhammed Ali notoriously lost his championship belt in 1978 to Leon Spinks, at the ‘Hilton’.
In more recent years, British fighter Ricky Hatton has favoured the casinos of Las Vegas as the venue for his various World Title fights. Hatton has lately fought Floyd Mayweather Jr, Paulie Malignaggi and Manny Pacquiao, all of which have been hosted at the MGM Grand – he is famed as being a major pull for British fans when he fights abroad, therefore the aforementioned bouts saw thousands of followers descend on Vegas for the weekend, taking over the casinos, bars, and finally the arena. During the television build-up to the Mayweather fight, Hatton was filmed in a jovial spirits on the casino floor, playing poker and blackjack, chatting to fans and staff, and seemingly embracing the casino culture.