Top Rank’s Arum to enter Boxing Hall of Fame

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, June 8, 1999 | 9:30 a.m.

Highlights

The accomplishments of which Bob Arum is most proud:

* Promoting weekly shows on ESPN for 15 years without scandal or controversy.

* Making the great middleweight fights of the modern era, with fighters such as Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns.

* Maneuvering George Foreman into position to knock out Michael Moorer for the heavyweight championship.

* Staying loyal to Muhammad Ali when everyone "was turning against him."

* Developing Oscar De La Hoya's career.

There's a fire extinguisher in his company's office, of course, and it's easy to imagine Bob Arum having more than just a conventional, practical use for it.

As promoter for Top Rank Boxing, Arum is constantly -- if only figuratively -- reaching for an inflammable repellent. On something of a daily basis, a good portion of his time is spent symbolically dampening upstart blazes.

Monday, for instance, Arum was knee deep in fire retardant after a weekend report out of Puerto Rico surfaced that indicated his protege, Oscar De Le Hoya, was not happy receiving a mere $15 million to fight fellow world champion Felix Trinidad Sept. 18 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. It took some reassurances, yet eventually the rumor was quelled and Arum could return to a less-stressful world of mountain-high paperwork and an endless stream of phone calls.

It could be said he's a candidate for the Fireman's Hall of Fame.

But, in reality, Saturday he'll be an inductee in the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Arum, somewhat against his better judgment, will be enshrined during a ceremony at the Canastota, N.Y., facility.

"Part of this business is putting out fires," he said during an afternoon interlude. "It's not the most pleasant part of the job, but you get a lot of that stuff. Every day, there's something.

"If you didn't get used to it or learn how to handle it, it would drive you crazy."

In reality, the De La Hoya flap was no flap at all. But it still required some attention from the Top Rank staff after the El Mundo newspaper either misquoted or misunderstood the fighter's trainer, Robert Alcazar.

"Alcazar denied he said the things they reported he said," Arum said. "Beyond that, there was nothing to it."

Arum, 67, finds these intrusions to be everyday occurrences and after 33 years in the business he handles them with a mixture of grit and grace. He is the rare person who is diplomatically gifted while earning a certain notoriety for the occasional vociferous outburst.

The bottom line is that he gets the job done.

That said, he doesn't believe he merits a spot in the Boxing Hall of Fame.

"It's a great institution in that it honors fighters, but I just don't believe it's appropriate to put a modern promoter in it," he said. "During our tenure we saw boxing with an enormous popularity around 1976, with the sport on network TV, the great U.S. Olympic team of that year and the 'Rocky' movie being so popular.

"But we squandered what we had and that wreckage is not a Hall of Fame achievement."

However indirectly, by "we" Arum is referring to himself and the equally influential Don King, who was inducted at Canastota last year. When Arum elaborated on why a sitting promoter should not be so widely honored, he alluded to a Federal Bureau of Investigation raid on King's office last Friday in Deerfield Beach, Florida.

"Here's why it's so ludicrous to allow a still-active promoter in: What if one of them is indicted?" Arum said. "That would reflect poorly not only on the sport but the Hall of Fame."

Arum will bring no such unwelcome baggage with him to Canastota. And despite the proclamations he has steadily issued since the Hall of Fame's class of 1999 was announced earlier this year, it appears as if he's ready to go and have a good time.

"It's a great honor," he said. "I'm certainly going to enjoy it and we're going to take Oscar and (fellow champion) Floyd Mayweather along, so in that regard I'm happy."

A private jet will pick up De La Hoya in Los Angeles on Friday, then hop to Las Vegas to grab Arum, his wife Lovee, as well as Mayweather and his father. They'll land in Syracuse and make their way to a Friday night dinner at Canastota, followed by a Saturday parade -- with Bo Derek as the honorary marshal -- and then the Hall of Fame ceremony.

If he allows himself a moment of introspection, Arum may consider the long route he has traveled since leaving the United States Attorney General's office in 1965 after having his sporting interest piqued by boxing. As the story goes, he promoted the first fight he saw -- between Muhammad Ali and George Chuvalo in March, 1966 -- and within a very short time he was in the business up to his Harvard law degree.

Today he is as powerful as any man has ever been in the sport.

"The legal background helps," he said, "because there's a lot of stuff I can decide on my own without having to check with attorneys."

Yet it's instinct and a knack for dollars and sense that has built the Top Rank empire. This is a company that has promoted dozens and dozens of great champions through the years, and one that is going strong with De La Hoya and Mayweather, to a lesser extent, as its current centerpieces.

"The things I'm most proud of are promoting weekly shows on ESPN for 15 years without scandal or controversy; developing the careers of just about everyone who has come to prominence in the last 20 years; making the great middleweight fights of the era with guys like Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns; steering George Foreman into position so that he could knock out Michael Moorer for the heavyweight championship; staying with Ali when his world was falling down and everyone was turning against him; and doing what I think is a fabulous job developing Oscar De La Hoya's career," he said.

With myriad details on the grand painting, the promoter rarely steps too far away from what has become his life's work.

"You generally accept the fact that you have to be available virtually every moment of every day," he said. "But that's not special to boxing promoters; look at doctors or anyone who runs their own business.

"While there are times I would like to be able to get away and know that everything would function without me, I'm enough of a realist to know it can't always be that way even though I do have a terrific group of people working for me."

Arum is not considering retirement and barely contemplates a reduced workload in spite of his age.

"My feeling is that I'll do this as long as I feel I'm effective at it," he said. "Once I feel I'm ineffective, I'll step away.

"But I could get to where I need to prioritize and maybe work on only two or three major promotions a year, while letting my staff handle the rest."

The nature of the sport and its many zany habits hasn't worn on him. In fact, it could be said he has the ability to look past its faults.

"I'm not discouraged by boxing," he said. "There are always new challenges. Like right now, it's communications and being on the cutting edge of Internet developments where we could someday reach billions of people with a fight we're promoting.

"Developments like that are coming so fast, they're very exciting. Seeing the world change at a rapid pace is fun."

Even if it requires protective equipment.

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