Columnist Dean Juipe: Commission will let Arum slide

Dean Juipe

Friday, July 14, 2000 | 10:27 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

The headline streamed across the top of the page, misleading readers but, by design, luring the easily led.

"State may ban Arum from promoting," the morning newspaper proclaimed earlier this week, referring to a complaint filed by the State of Nevada against boxing promoter Bob Arum regarding payments Arum made to have a 1995 heavyweight title fight in Las Vegas sanctioned by the International Boxing Federation.

After it receives Arum's written response, the Nevada State Athletic Commission will set a hearing date -- likely to be in mid-August -- and the matter as it pertains to Arum will be resolved at that time.

As for whether the NSAC may ban Arum from promoting in the state, there isn't one chance in a hundred that the penalty will be anything close to the magnitude suggested by the paper down the street. It may as well have run a headline that said "NSAC may form dance troop and tour America."

What Arum did -- which was pay money that was being extorted from him -- was a business decision, pure and simple. He paid the $100,000 demanded by the International Boxing Federation for its sanctioning the George Foreman vs. Axel Schulz fight because, as a title fight, it increased the fight's profile and, in theory at least, led to additional ticket sales.

So what?

Arum doesn't need an apologist and this isn't an effort to rush to his defense. It's merely an evaluation of what he's apt to face at the commission hearing and an opinion that he will receive nothing more than a lecture or a public scorning. And that should suffice.

Those who take offense at Arum's actions and believe he should feel a significant repercussion as a result of his payment (and confession before a United States District Court in New Jersey), cite moral indignation as the reason for their outrage. They say punishing Arum with a lifetime ban is an example the NSAC should pursue, if it has the courage.

But the NSAC -- which has been criticized in the past from this corner for its occasional weak-kneed ways -- can't realistically ban Arum and it shouldn't feel an obligation to do so, particularly if the crusade to exile him is being led by the moral police. It's a misguided notion to think sending Arum to Elba would alter anything in boxing, or, more to the point, be an appropriate sentence for his rather harmless act.

At the most, Arum is guilty of not being completely upfront with the public and the one way he could have corrected that was by running a line at the bottom of the fight's promotional ads that said "The promoter has paid a fee to the IBF to have this match sanctioned as a title fight." Such an admission wouldn't have affected the fight's attendance or altered its gate receipts.

But the fact that the line of admission didn't run in the ads is only of cosmetic consequence. No one was actually misled and Schulz proved to be a worthy opponent for Foreman.

What the State of Nevada is asking its athletic commission to do is this: Go on the record with its disapproval of what Arum did with the IBF, verbalize the belief that such transgressions will not be tolerated in the future, and maybe add a probationary clause to Arum's licensing status. And that's what it will do.

Arum, appropriately, will express his remorse and come across as contrite. If he's so inclined, he could also address the clandestine nature of the payoff and, perhaps, cite examples of similar demands that have been made on him and others by the various boxing sanctioning organizations.

Remember, too, that Arum is merely the first of at least three boxing promoters who do business in Nevada who have confessed to improprieties with the IBF. If Nevada sends Arum packing, it will almost certainly have to do the same with Cedric Kushner and Dino Duva, and a sweeping action like that would eliminate the state as a boxing hotbed and erase Las Vegas' long-standing reputation as the boxing capital of the world.

Only Don King -- who has yet to be entangled in the IBF mess although he leads the league in shady dealings -- would be happy with seeing the heads of Arum, Kushner and Duva lying on the commission's office floor.

Three other items to bear in mind: the IBF is on trial back East not because it is more ethically corrupt than the World Boxing Council or the World Boxing Association, but because it is the only one of the three based in the United States and, as a result, is the only one of the three within reach and under the purview of the federal government; Arum, via his Top Rank Boxing firm, has a boxing license in many states in the union and it isn't realistic to expect each of them to call him on the carpet for what he told a grand jury in New Jersey; and, not to be dismissed or taken lightly is the fact Top Rank annually promotes a number of high-profile cards in Nevada that bring in millions of dollars of revenue to the community and hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax revenues to the State of Nevada.

The NSAC isn't a tourism agency and it isn't obliged to license a man whose business deals bring untold wealth to the state, but it isn't apt to banish him or ignore his positive contributions, either.

What's going on here is that Nevada has the most influential boxing commission in the world and it believes it needs to make a statement. If nothing else but for appearance's sake it has to set the proper example; it has to summon Arum and express its displeasure.

But ban him and lose Top Rank's business to other states and feel the ire of the casino industry for the loss of revenue and destroy Nevada's worldwide reputation as the big-money capital of the sport?

No way.