History
The Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena was opened on July 4, 1959 by then U.S. Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Its first event followed four days later, a Bantamweight title fight between Jose Becerra and Alphonse Halimi on July 8, 1959. The Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena became a companion facility to the adjacent Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and home court to the Los Angeles Lakers of the NBA from October 1960 to December 1967, the Los Angeles Clippers also of the NBA from 1984–1999, the Los Angeles Kings of the NHL from October to December 1967 during their inaugural 1967-68 season, the USC Trojans basketball team of the NCAA from 1959–2006, the UCLA Bruins Basketball team of the NCAA from 1959–1965 and again as a temporary home in 2011-2012, the Los Angeles Blades of the Western Hockey League from 1961 to 1967, the Los Angeles Sharks of the WHA from 1972–1974, the Los Angeles Cobras of the AFL in 1988, and the original Los Angeles Stars of the ABA from 1968–1970. The arena played host to the top indoor track meet on the West Coast, the annual Los Angeles Invitational track meet (frequently called the "Sunkist Invitational", with title sponsorship by Sunkist Growers, Incorporated), from 1960 until the event's demise in 2004. Since the Trojans left, the arena has taken on a lower profile. The arena still holds high school basketball championships, as well as concerts and conventions. The UCLA men's basketball team played a majority of their home games at the Sports Arena during the 2011-12 season while Pauley Pavilion underwent renovation.
Since its opening day, the arena has hosted the 1960 Democratic National Convention, the 1968 and 1972 NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four, the 1992 NCAA Women's Basketball Final Four, the 1963 NBA All-Star Game, and the boxing competitions during the 1984 Summer Olympics. In addition to hosting the final portion of WrestleMania 2 in 1986, the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena has also hosted WrestleMania VII in 1991 as well as other WWE events, although Staples Center is now WWE's primary Los Angeles home. The arena also hosted When Worlds Collide, a 1994 joint card between the Mexican lucha libre promotion AAA and World Championship Wrestling (which normally called the Great Western Forum home until they, too, moved to Staples Center) that is credited with introducing the lucha style to English-speaking audiences in the U.S. NBC's renewed version of American Gladiators was filmed from the arena.
Read more about this topic: Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In every election in American history both parties have their clichés. The party that has the clichés that ring true wins.”
—Newt Gingrich (b. 1943)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)