Down for the count?

Boxing makes its return to Madison Square Garden in New York tomorrow with two heavyweight fights that could draw as many as 12,000 fans. A week later, there’s a Don King-promoted show in Atlantic City featuring seven world champions in five title bouts; it’s nearly sold out.

Still, promoter Lou DiBella remains worried about the health of his sport.

DiBella, the former boxing boss at HBO, sounded an alarm recently when he called for a “summit” of promoters to figure out ways to save boxing.

“We’ve got to fix this sport,” DiBella declared. “If we do nothing, we’re dead.”

And there is evidence the sport needs help.

• ESPN recently decided to stop paying rights fees to promoters for its “Friday Night Fights.”

• The top heavyweight fight on pay-per-view this year drew 600,000 buys, a huge drop from bouts in recent years that drew more than 1 million.

• The heavyweight division — the sport’s driving force — has lost or is losing its stars, and there are no compelling fighters on the horizon.

• There were few major fights in 2003 that captured the attention of the public.

Predictions of boxing’s death are nothing new. The sport always has bounced back, though never to the level it enjoyed early in the 20th century, when boxing and horse racing dominated the sports pages.

But there is a sense this time is different. This time, perhaps, there won’t be an upturn.

“This is the sport of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier,” DiBella said. “When I was a kid, there was nobody more important to the sports world than Ali. I want to work in that sport again. I want to work in the sport of Joe Louis.”

There are no Alis or Fraziers or Louises in boxing now.

The heavyweight division is devoid of stars and, some would say, talent. The fighters who carried the division for the past 17 years, starting with Mike Tyson and including Riddick Bowe, Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis, are too old or unstable to sustain the heavyweight class.

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