mid-1980s. Chinese fans, mostly subdued for the six preliminary "undercard" fights, rose to their feet for the main event, calling out "Jia you!" — Chinese for "Let's go!" — and stomping their feet as Zou fought a six-round flyweight match with Jesus Ortega.

Now all eyes are on the "Clash in Cotai" in November, featuring Pacquiao for the main event and Zou on the undercard. Organizers say it'll be the biggest professional boxing match ever held in China. It'll also be the first outside of the U.S. since 2006 for the Filipino superstar, who has lost his two last bouts.

Boxing's emergence in Macau is another reminder of how the global gambling industry's center of gravity has shifted to the East thanks to rising incomes in China. The former Portuguesecolony, now a semiautonomous region of China, overtook the Las Vegas Strip in 2006 as the world's most lucrative gambling market. Last year it raked in $38 billion in gambling revenue, six times more than the Strip. But authorities want Macau to be known for more than gambling and see big events as a way to turn the city, which has a lingering reputation for seediness and corruption, into a broader tourist destination.

Zou's celebrated trainer, Los Angeles-based Freddie Roach, left no doubt about how the focus has changed in the boxing world.

"I think I've got a new home," he said at a press conference last week, referring to the Venetian, the flagship casino resort of billionaire Sheldon Adelson's Macau casino arm, Sands China Ltd. "Macau has become the