Madison Square Garden plays host to hundreds of sporting events every year, and the sporting teams that call MSG home are among its most exciting showmen. Whether it's hockey or basketball you prefer, scores of dramatic episodes in the stories of these famous teams are enacted here, before the faithful crowds packed into the five levels of roaring seats. New York Rangers and New York Knicks both enjoy great support from local fans, and they all keep coming back for more, as the show is simply one that must go on.

Hockey
For years, the New York Rangers have captivated fans with some of the most competitive and skillful contests in the history of American sport. Known as "the Blueshirts", the Rangers joined the NHL in the 1926-27 season and became a top draw for the Big Apple. Rangers won their first Stanley Cup in their second season (1927-28), cementing a strong relationship between themselves and their public, and earning them a reputation as an outfit worth their salt.

The team's glittering honors list includes four Stanley Cups, as well as some of the liveliest, toughest players in the world of hockey. The list contains the likes of Lester Patrick, Frank Boucher, Gump Worsley, Emile Francis, Rod Gilbert, Ed Giacomin, Brad Park, Phil Esposito, Mark Messier, and last but not least, Wayne Gretzky. These players have impacted New York and American hockey in immeasurable ways, and the "blue seats" in the Garden continue to be a source of fanatical hockey worship to this day, to the delight of Rangers fans and the amusement of visitors.

Basketball
Everybody is familiar with the sight of the kids shooting hoop in the steel-mesh wrapped playgrounds and ball courts of Manhattan. The basketball scene has become synonymous with "cool" in the minds of Americans, thanks to the obsession with the game on the part of native New Yorkers. And New York Knicks are New York's team. Needless to say, the Knicks call Madison Square Garden home, as do their crazy fans, and from all over Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, and far beyond, they come to watch their heroes.

Basketball is alive in the Big Apple, and the greatest basketball arena in the world - Madison Square Garden - promises the most dramatic struggles and glamorous clashes, between the world's top teams and individuals.

Knicks fans tend to be well-versed in all the latest changes within the game, as well as the form of their opponents and news behind the scenes. Knicks fans enjoy a sense of basketball history quite uncommon among the fans of other, less distinguished teams, and they know this all too well. The informed nature of the Knicks crowd creates a tremendous intensity in Madison Square Garden, as each and every challenge and point is seen as another milestone in a much larger picture. A day or night spent at MSG watching the Knicks bounce that ball around the court, is quality time, and that is the honest opinion of the folks who live in the heart of the world's most exciting city.

Boxing
But there is yet another sport for which Madison Square Garden is famed, and that sport is boxing.
many people will tell you that there's nothing to quite compare to fight night at the Garden. The venue enjoys a long and distinguished record, having hosted numerous historically important bouts. There have been no less than eleven heavyweight championships and as m any as fifty world title bouts held at Madison Square Garden over the past two or three decades.

The first heavyweight champion to box in the Garden was John L. Sullivan, when he fought Joe Collins in his title defense in 1882. The fight had the added attraction of Sullivan offering Collins money if were able to withstand the onslaught for four rounds, which Collins managed to do.

Joe Louis was a Garden regular, taking part in eight successful title defenses at the Garden. Madison Square Garden was again the stage for a world class showdown in 1942, when Sugar Ray Robinson defeated Jake "Raging Bull" LaMotta in a Garden thriller.

Other classics, such as Joe Louis versus Rocky Marciano, and Joe Frazier versus Muhammad Ali, took place there, and from those unassuming beginnings in 1882 there has grown a globally renowned institution which today is as vigorous as it ever was.

Without question, to sit in the Garden is to share a space which has seen some of the very best in sport compete, to triumph, and suffer crushing losses. It is the arena of legends.