Columnist Dean Juipe: Arum salvages Top Rank by appeasing Hopkins

Dean Juipe

Monday, June 7, 2004 | 9:31 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 saved his company and his business during a man-to-man meeting Friday with Bernard Hopkins in a suite at the MGM.

Top Rank, he said, was this close to going under.

"The whole thing would have gone down the drain," Arum said of his 30-plus years in boxing and the empire he has constructed. "It was that close ... that close."

Arum, who recounted the story in an exclusive interview with the Sun late Saturday night after both Hopkins and Oscar De La Hoya had won their fights in the MGM Grand Garden Arena, was under siege Friday after Hopkins threatened to withdraw from his fight against Robert Allen because he was unsure that referee Joe Cortez would give him a fair shake.

Ordinarily, a fighter can opt out of a fight without any serious and lasting repercussions, but in Hopkins' case it was decidedly different. This was a big-money card (with a $4.5 million gate) that was only a day away and the Home Box Office cable network was steadfast that it would not finance or broadcast the pay-per-view card if both Hopkins and De La Hoya did not appear as scheduled.

If Hopkins had, indeed, withdrawn from the fight -- and he had gone so far as to check the airlines' schedules for flights from Las Vegas to Philadelphia -- it was Arum and Arum alone who would have born the financial liability.

"It would have been immense," he said, reciting a list that began with the MGM and ended with the vendors who would be working the arena. In between were a multitude of individuals (such as other fighters) and businesses (tech-support teams among them) who could have sued Top Rank had the card been terminated.

He was certain the MGM would have sued. Same thing with HBO. Same thing with De La Hoya's business arm, Golden Boy Promotions, as it was Arum who brought Hopkins into the picture.

And while Arum would have sued Hopkins in turn, it was Top Rank that stood to lose the most if the card went under.

"I felt we quite possibly wouldn't have had any choice but to declare bankruptcy," he said.

But what about the event insurance that every major promoter takes out before a huge card like the one Saturday? Wouldn't that have protected Top Rank?

"Only if a fighter's injured," Arum said. "No one's going to insure me from a fighter walking out."

Hopkins wasn't injured but he was acting nuts. "He's unraveling," De La Hoya told a confidant after learning of Hopkins' threat as well as Hopkins' petulance while talking to a small group of writers Thursday night.

At the very least Hopkins had from May 25 (when the Nevada State Athletic Commission appointed Cortez to referee the fight) to raise an objection, but he didn't do any such thing beforehand (when presented with a list of possible judges) or at an organizational meeting Wednesday morning that included the participants and representatives of the network and NSAC.

"I was doing a manager's job," the self-managed Hopkins said late Saturday. "(Objecting to Cortez) seemed like something I needed to be concerned about."

Perhaps Hopkins should hire a manager, yet that was irrelevant with him threatening to leave town either late Thursday night -- "I'm out of here," he told a Top Rank representative -- or prior to Friday afternoon's weigh-in. The stakes were great as Arum first called NSAC executive director Marc Ratner on Thursday before spending several hours on proverbial pins and needles.

When Ratner and commission chairman John Bailey declined to remove Cortez from the assignment and when the referee himself said he would refuse to step aside, the ball was back in Hopkins' court.

"I don't know if it was a bluff," Arum said of Hopkins' threat. "But I saw a situation unfolding that had catastrophic implications.

"It forced me to use all my powers of persuasion."

Arum tried the NSAC again but was rebuffed (much to his dismay, it should be added) before Hopkins called and requested a meeting.

Arum then made the short trip from Top Rank's Howard Hughes Parkway offices to the MGM and met with Hopkins in his upstairs suite.

"He asked for the meeting," Arum said, extending credit to Hopkins in spite of the misery he caused.

It was just Arum and Hopkins at the meeting and Arum played his hand.

"I told him I was on his side," he said. "I know for a fact that if I would have come down hard on him, he'd have been on a plane and out of town."

Arum duped Hopkins in a sense by telling him a special camera -- an "eye in the sky" -- would be installed and that it would follow Cortez around the ring and monitor his actions during the fight. The inference was that Cortez wouldn't dare do anything untoward and Hopkins bought it, even though the eye-in-the-sky concept is fairly routine at big fights and the camera takes in far more than the referee.

Nevertheless, Hopkins liked the idea and Top Rank had a man stationed in front of the eye-in-the-sky monitor during Hopkins' fight against Allen. The fight, of course, unfolded as if everything was perfectly normal and Hopkins himself had no complaints afterward.

"Joe Cortez can referee another fight of mine any time," Hopkins said after defeating Allen by decision.

Hopkins took a huge and ill-advised risk, as he would have been all but blackballed had he walked out a day before a fight that involves a follow-up bout in September and more than $50 million in investments. No one would have dared work with him again and his word, let alone signature on a contract, would have been worthless.

Apparently, Top Rank would have been just as worthless had Hopkins pulled that pointless trigger.

But Arum is a skilled negotiator and Hopkins had just enough semblance of common sense to get through the crisis without alienating everyone in the business.

On a weekend of close calls, this was the closest of them all.