This Saturday night, at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J., Don King is putting on one of his classic extravaganzas - Five world title fights on one pay-per-view show, with eight championship bouts in total.

"From top-to-bottom, it's the best card I've ever been involved in," said Bobby Goodman, a veteran of over 50 years in the sport, and the V.P. of boxing operations and matchmaker for DKP. "It's almost an unbelievable accomplishment to put on eight world championships of this caliber, of this ilk."

According to Goodman, Zab Judah will be defending his WBO jr. welterweight title against Jaime Rangel to open up the broadcast, then Alejandro Garcia will face Travis Simms, then Hasim Rahman takes on John Ruiz, then Ricardo Mayorga and Cory Spinks attempt to unify the welterweight division and Bernard Hopkins caps things off with his grudge match against William Joppy for the undisputed middleweight crown. Those who are in attendance for this virtually sold out event will also be able to see Wayne Braithwaite defend his WBC cruiserweight belt against Luis Pineda and an interesting pair of smaller weight title clashes when Luis Perez goes at it again with Felix Machado for the IBF 115-pound belt and Rosendo Alvarez takes on Victor Burgos in a unification bout at jr. flyweight.

"That's the beauty of this show," said a giddy Goodman. "Any one of these matches, from top-to-bottom, has such integrity, that every one could stand on its own as the main event.

Truth be told, some of these 'title' fights are for dubious belts (such as Garcia-Simms) or mismatches (namely Judah-Rangel) but the other fights on the pay-per-view telecast, which is being distributed by HBO Pay-Per-View, are quite compelling and competitive. And Goodman says that it wasn't that difficult to piece together.

"To tell you the truth, other than dealing with a lot of special needs, it's almost easier dealing with tried and true professionals that you know are going to show up, that you know are going to do the interviews or going to do the media tour and don't have to go hat-in-hand trying to sell a show like this. You just have to work it. There's a big difference when you have a show that might be a good show but it's not something everyone wants to see.

"It's not a historical event like this. This is history. The most world championships ever on a card were six and that was Don's record. He's breaking his own record." The night that Goodman refers to occurred on February 20th, 1993 in Azteca Stadium in Mexico, when Julio Cesar Chavez butchered Greg Haugen in front of 130,000 of his rabid countrymen.

One of the great things about a card like this is that you really don't have to deal with the issue of having late pullouts and subsequently having to find replacements for them.

"There's not a lot of drop-outs," said Goodman." But if you lose somebody when you have a undisputed title, you can't replace it, you just have to suck it up."

But there are other issues to deal with with so many sanctioning bodies and championships involved in one card.

"We've had new problems to deal with because you have multi-champions. So you have issues with gloves; forget about coin tosses, the state of New Jersey will allow them to wear different brands of gloves if they're the same weight and the same color. So now I have to go and resource our inventory and see what we have in various brands and what colors and what sizes. And those that we don't have, we have to order and make sure they're here on time and everything is straight."

And then there is the issue of accommodating the various representatives of the sanctioning organizations.

"Oh, it's incredible, because you have four organizations with eight world championship fights," explains Goodman. "Some of them are multi-world championship fights that have individual supervisors in, and an individual set of officials. So the supervisors alone, you have three separate ones for the Hopkins-Joppy fight, you have three additional ones for the Mayorga-Spinks fight. I mean, that's just supervisors, not counting the officials you need for each fight."

This card is reminiscent of King's 'Revenge, the Rematches', that took place on May 7th, 1994, when a quartet of return bouts took place under one roof at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Julio Cesar Chavez would seek to avenge his loss to Frankie Randall, Azumah Nelson and Jesse James Leija fought the second of their four bout series, Gerald McClellan and Julian Jackson would slug it out once more and Terry Norris would seek atonement against Simon Brown. From beginning to end, it may have been the best pay-per-view show I've ever seen.

"It was one of my favorite cards, no question about it," said Marc Ratner, executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, who worked that memorable night. "Because from top-to-bottom, they had some great fights. Maybe not some of the guys at their peaks, but absolutely, that was a wonderful night."

Ratner says that with a card of that caliber and magnitude some special considerations were made.

"You start working a lil' bit earlier and you have to have everything organized. It's a lil' different now, but even then, you have medical things you have to get done. So as soon as we had the fight card, about four-to-six weeks out, I would have written a letter to the promoter saying this is what Rahman needs, this is what Ruiz needs and we would lay out the week of the fight, the weigh-ins, and we would give all that about 30 days out."

And accommodating the sanctioning bodies was a headache for Ratner that still exists today.

"The biggest problem I had, even today, is allocating seats at ringside when you have multiple sanctioning bodies," admitted Ratner. "They're all fighting, they all want to be recognized, they all want to get in the ring. I mean Roy Jones brings people we've never seen before with his belts. So we had some NBA's and some other things there and the IBO's. But you just try to accommodate them but if there's any problem, we won't bring anybody in and we'll use all Nevada officials."

That night in May ended up with Norris outboxing Brown badly over 12 rounds, Leija outhustling Nelson to earn a decision, McClellan blowing out Jackson in one explosive round and Chavez being rescued by Flip Homansky to take a controversial eight round technical decision over 'the Surgeon'.

"That was the best show I've ever seen," said the respected boxing scribe Graham Houston, who was ringside that night. "In fact, the famous British matchmaker Mickey Duff, he was at that show and I was there with Mickey. We were walking out of the arena and we were walking into the media center and Don King was there and Mickey went up to Don and said, 'Don, I just got to tell you, this is the best show I've ever seen' and Mickey Duff had seen a lot of shows. That was just a tremendous show, I thought."

This card is a throwback to a time when King would routinely have shows with competitive championship fights on the card. But it seemed once Mike Tyson came back, his undercards sagged badly and it seemed King didn't feel the need to put on pay-per-view shows with solid supporting bouts as long as 'Iron Mike' was headlining. Simply put, too many shows with fights like Chavez-Larry LaCoursiere and Miguel Angel Gonzalez against Roberto Granciosa.

"I think it's a nice card," said Max Kellerman of ESPN2. "I think the card has certain problems for Don King, because it's difficult to get dates for fighters, he has a tendency to lump all these fighters on the same card. You gotta get 'em work, you owe them a certain number of fights and it can turn into a real marathon."

What wrong with that?

"Now, Rahman-Ruiz is a nice fight, it's a main event, it's an HBO level main event. Ricardo Mayorga-Cory Spinks, same sorta thing. Bernard Hopkins-William Joppy, same sorta thing. But going into each of those fights, it's not impossible for the underdog to win but you're not expecting Ruiz to beat Rahman, you're not expecting Spinks to upset Mayorga. I'm not and you're not expecting Joppy to beat Hopkins.

"So it's not really a card where you're going into see great action, and none of those fights are great action fights or fights where you wonder who's going to win. It's kind of a card that builds to another card. Don King is a guy who used to put Jeff Fenech and Azumah Nelson on the undercard of Tyson-Ruddock, he put Simon Brown-Mo Blocker on the undercard of the other Tyson-Ruddock," continued Kellerman.

"The difference between King and Arum used to be the undercards. Both of them made great main events but Arum you'd get like Lupe Aquino against whoever, and you're like,' ughhhh'.

Yeah, but that still beat having Mia St Can't Fight and Bloatedbean on the undercard.

"Arum's undercards used to be dreadful," Kellerman recalled." King's used to be better than the main event."

This card is for the fanatic, and the reality is that these fights will hold almost no interest to the casual boxing fan and will be lucky to do over 300,000 buys. But it is still a good night of boxing.

"There's no 'must-see' fight but there are several good fights and maybe fights that will affect the kind of bigger fights we may see in 2004," said Larry Merchant of HBO, who will not be doing the broadcast for this event." Mayorga is the 'must-see' fighter and obviously, if he wins he's going to fight Mosley. It'll be the first big fight of next year. Hopkins, if he wins, is probably going to have some meaningful fights next year and Rahman, if he wins, it's good news for Rahman because he will now move into the top level of the fighters who will be candidates to succeed Lennox Lewis and at the same time, it means we're not going to have to see John Ruiz again."

Both Kellerman and Merchant say that they plan on watching the fights on TV. Ratner is going a step further than that.

"I'm going to it," says Ratner, who lives in Las Vegas and is also a football official for the Mountain West Conference. "I have some frequent flier miles on United that I've saved up through football and as a fan it's a card I want to see. I want to see Bernard in person, I want to see Mayorga again and Rahman-Ruiz is of great interest to me."

START TIME

Goodman says that the show will begin at 5 pm eastern, with the pay-per-view telecast beginning at 8 pm. There are nine fights on the card.

With HBO only distributing the event, Barry Tompkins will head up the broadcast team with 'the Colonel' Bob Sheridan, as usual, doing the international feed.

Goodman also mentions that the telecast will be offered in high-definition for those who have the capabilities to get such a broadcast.

CLASSIC CARD

Another classic Don King card was back in September 17th, 1994, when Chavez took on Meldrick Taylor for the second time and on the undercard Felix Trinidad took out Yory Boy Campas, Gabriel Ruelas downed Jesse James Leija, Frankie Randall defeated Juan Coggi and future Hall-of-Famer Ricardo Lopez was even on the bill.

BYE GEORGE

I guess X-Mas dreams can come true, as with the announcement of George Foreman's departure from the HBO boxing team, it's a Merry Christmas for many boxing fans out there.

It's funny to hear Foreman say he's doing it for family reasons - aren't his duties at HBO really just a highly paid part-time gig? - and the fact that one good source tells me that as soon as his negotiations with HBO closed up, his people called Showtime to inquire about their interest in the former two-time heavyweight champion.

Hopefully HBO will replace big George with someone who will prepare properly for the broadcasts, not verbally bully his on-air partners when they disagree with him and someone who will consistently make cogent points.

I say they keep it in-house and tab Emanuel Steward for the job. He's got experience and he is very good at analyzing fights. Yeah, he can be quite biased when he has an agenda, but he's also very good at breaking down fights.

TOO HEAVY WEIGHT

I thought Kirk Johnson had a shot against Vitali Klitschko until he weighed-in at a rotund 260 pounds. At that point, you just knew whatever chance he had at pulling the upset had evaporated like the food he must have been ingesting during his training camp.

You have to feel for Dino Duva, who mortgaged his whole company's future on this underachiever. I guess it's akin to franchises who hitch their futures on guys like Derrick Coleman and Manny Ramirez - but at least those guys have been highly productive in their sports; Johnson hasn't. I would call him the greatest free agent bust since Grant Hill, but that would be an affront to Hill. We all know that he at least tries to get himself healthy enough to play vigourously. Benoit Benjamin would be the more apt comparison.

But this is what happens when you give a guy millions of dollars on promise and potential and not actual production. It's compounded when the guy isn't exactly the most Spartan of workers. The fact that Johnson was able to leverage and scam his way to millions of dollars from various promoters, lawyers, television moguls and managers, is one of the great hustles of recent memory. That there, was his championship belt. At that point, any sense of urgency to win a real one in the ring had gone out the window.

You'd think with the way Duva had bent over backward for this guy that he'd at least train for this bout, much less show up for it.

BABY JOE

I had Joe Mesi-Monte Barrett a draw but I think that Mesi was exposed a bit in this fight. He has decent offensive skills but you saw what happened when he had some heat put on him in the later rounds. What happens when he faces a guy who is a bona-fide puncher with better skills?

Remember, even though he blew out DaVarryl Williamson in one round in September, he may have been the third or fourth best heavyweight on that show behind Dominick Guinn, Duncan Dokiwari and Juan Carlos Gomez.

FINAL FLURRIES

Jorge Paez, who eked out a win against Scott McCracken, needs to call it a day. It's simply getting harder and harder for him to get out of the way anymore against even marginal guys. This is getting dangerous with him.... Steven Luevano continued his development with a second round KO of Jose Luis Tula.... I thought Courtney Burton got a bit lucky to escape against Francisco Lorenzo. Bottom line is that there is no excuse for not training in the same fashion as he did against Angel Manfredy.....I hear Vernon Forrest has turned down Raul Marquez because he has a phobia about fighting left-handers. But look for Vasilliy Jirov-Kelvin Davis to be on the undercard when Forrest returns to HBO in early 2004... I also hear that either Jesse James Leija or Emmanuel Clottey will face Francisco Bojado on January 24th on HBO underneath Arturo Gatti's return....Has anyone noticed that King has been unusually quiet going into his pay-per-view show? One source tells me that it's because he's tied up with his lawsuit with Terry Norris, which from what I've heard, is not going well for 'Mr. Only in America'.