Columnist Dean Juipe: Promoter Arum braces for deal-busting upset

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, June 1, 2004 | 10:32 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

Bob Arum is ready to have his best-laid plans scuttled. He realizes either Oscar De La Hoya or Bernard Hopkins could lose Saturday night.

The risk: De La Hoya and Hopkins are contractually obliged to fight Sept. 18, but only if each wins his fight Saturday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. If the September fight comes off as planned, both of the participants and Arum stand to make a fortune.

But if either De La Hoya (who fights Felix Sturm) or Hopkins (who fights Robert Allen) slips Saturday at the MGM, the September showdown is all but off.

"I think it's very possible one or the other guy loses," Arum said Monday, referring to the Saturday fights involving De La Hoya and Hopkins.

The admission may qualify as one-part marketing ploy and one-part concession to the obvious. Arum would like to sell the few remaining tickets to Saturday's card while realizing that boxing is a sport where results are seldom completely predictable.

Remember, it was just three weeks ago that Antonio Tarver upset Roy Jones Jr.

So what happens if Sturm wins? Or if Allen wins? Or if both Sturm and Allen win?

"Your guess is as good as mine," said Arum, standing in the main lobby of the MGM near a boxing ring set up to accommodate Hopkins for a brief workout and publicity stunt. "If one or the other loses, we have no plans.

"Rather than do the negotiating for all the various options, we didn't do anything more than have De La Hoya and Hopkins sign a contract to fight in September that's predicated on them winning these first fights," Arum said. "I didn't think I could get everyone to focus (on the assorted options), so we didn't do it.

"The problem is, it's not easy to consider the other possibilities because it's so devastating compared to a De La Hoya vs. Hopkins fight."

He added that a clause inserted into the contract for the Sept. 18 fight protects Hopkins in the event both he and De La Hoya win Saturday but De La Hoya reconsiders and elects not to fight in September. If that were to happen, Hopkins would receive a $3 million payoff.

But that's not Arum's greatest concern.

"I can tell when a kid wants to do something and when he feels he's being forced to do it, and this is all Oscar's call," Arum said, underscoring a given in this promotion: De La Hoya wants to do it. He wants to not only test the middleweight waters and face Sturm, he wants to take on the undisputed middleweight champion later this year.

Yet the roadblocks that Sturm and Allen provide keep Arum from gushing -- or counting his pay-per-view receipts -- just yet.

"Even though no one really knows him, Sturm has a good pedigree and the only knock on him is that he lacks experience in this type of big-time fight," Arum said of Sturm, a 25-year-old German who is 20-0 without having faced any notable opposition.

In the other fight Allen figures to provide Hopkins with a decent test, given his 36-4 record and the experience of two previous fights with the champion.

"Allen is real strong for a middleweight," Arum said. "And Bernard's age (39) could come into play. As we all know, an older fighter's skills can deteriorate in the blink of an eye."

In that same blink of an eye Hopkins could lose the $10 million-plus he would get for facing De La Hoya in September and De La Hoya could lose the almost $30 million he hopes to receive as well. Arum, the broker in the deal, is helpless.

"There would be a market (for De La Hoya vs. Allen or Hopkins vs. Sturm in September) but it would be small compared to De La Hoya vs. Hopkins," he said. "I don't know what we'd do, other than to say life has to go on."