Las Vegas likes to place itself at the centre of the boxing universe.
The boxing universe has changed dramatically since then, although it is interesting to see the Nation's revival.
Nowadays, wherever boxing exists there's a parallel boxing universe in apposition: pugilism versus white-collar boxing; riots at the Garden and polite applause at the Olympics.
The Philippines became the centre of the boxing universe during the first 10 years of the 21st century when native son Manny Pacquiao set a record by winning world championships in seven different weight classes and was widely considered to be the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world during that decade.
Right now there are no heavyweights in their boxing universe and they long ago promised their mother that they would never toe the line against one another.
It was the early 2000s, when I was just starting out, and fashion was a kind of chocolate box universe, totally bullshit and phony.
The box was a universe, a poem, frozen on the boundaries of human experience.
Mark "E to his friends" Everett knew little of his father or his theories and after his mother died from cancer and his sister took her own life (her suicide note said that she was going to join her father in a parallel universe) he boxed up his family possessions and locked them in his basement.
A lot has happened to Naseem Hamed in the past year, some of it earth-shattering, but judging by the beard he now wears the former world featherweight champion has been spending plenty of his spare time communing with Allah and trying to make sense of life, the universe and boxing.
Think of the universe as a box of scrabble letters.
The piano is, after all, a fantastic machine, a universe in a box that just begs for exploration.
