The news release blared "Sworn Enemies!" and advised media members that mega-promoters Bob Arum and Don King, who have spent the better part of four decades engaged in boxing's equivalent of the Cold War, would hold a "once-in-a-lifetime" joint forum Saturday afternoon at Bally's Atlantic City.
Given the contentious history of the 74-year-old archrivals, many reporters, in town to cover the heavyweight fight that night between WBC champion Hasim Rahman and James Toney, showed up to see if there actually was a chance to witness the advancement of peace in our time. Personally, my mind was reeling with grainy, black-and-white images of Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta, of Khrushchev banging his shoe against his desk at the United Nations and shouting "We will bury you!" at glaring U.S. ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.
Perhaps the nice folks at Bally's would even set up a stage designed to resemble the deck of a battleship, at which time King and Arum, dressed in military uniforms and with corncob pipes clenched in their teeth like Gen. MacArthur, would sign a peace treaty formally ending boxing's most enduring conflict.
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| Floyd Mayweather Jr. will put his undefeated record on the line against Zab Judah. (Getty Images) |
What we got was Arum and King, now tenuously allied against new enemies, hawking an April 8 pay-per-view fight -- Arum's Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. King's Zab Judah -- which seemingly had been devalued beyond salvage by recent events. It was like being issued press credentials for the Paris peace conference and finding two used-car salesmen seated at the big table.
But, hey, that doesn't mean the show wasn't entertaining in its own right. HBO blow-by-blow announcer Jim Lampley -- symbolically playing the role of Jimmy Carter at a Rose Garden meeting of Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat -- moderated. Reporters got to ask questions which were answered mostly with half-truths and wild distortions, after which there were the obligatory photo ops. Arum (black) and King (burgundy) even wore complementary turtlenecks for the occasion, although His Hairness' ensemble was accentuated with considerably more bling-bling.
The last time these two had come together for the presumed betterment of boxing, it was to co-promote the 1999 welterweight unification showdown of WBC champion Oscar De La Hoya, then promoted by Arum, and IBF titlist Felix Trinidad, the lead pony in King's promotional stable. Trinidad won a disputed majority decision and King, during a self-indulgent monologue at the postfight news conference, had the power to his microphone turned off by an employee of Arum's Top Rank Inc.
Joke all you want about Arum and King, not their Oscars and Felixes, being the real Odd Couple. These guys are big enough, or at least smart enough, to allow bygones to be bygones -- if there's a profit to be made by joining forces.
"If you were making a chart from zero to a hundred, Bob Arum –- Harvard graduate, Kennedy raider, Jewish ethnic, got the complexion for the connection –- would be most likely to succeed," King said, again outlining the obvious differences between himself and the man he once called a "master of trickeration."
"Don King –- African-American, ex-convict, served time in jail -- on (a scale of) zero to 100, it would be 100 to zero for Bob Arum. But in reality, it hasn't been that way because I've been extraordinary at what I do. Us playing off each other has been a blessing more than anything. At the end of the day, only the two of us are left standing. Collectively, the rest can't tie our shoestrings."
"The rest" -– Arum's and King's Nixonian enemies list –- includes fighters-turned-promoters such as De La Hoya and Bernard Hopkins and, in a biting of the hands that so often have fed them, HBO executives. As the rants-in-stereo continued, HBO publicist Ray Stallone angrily stalked off, incredulous that his company had, in essence, offered itself up as the pig-on-a-spit for an impromptu Friar's Club Roast.
Asked to comment on HBO's role in boxing, Arum said, "The answer is, they're paying me $4 million for the fight (Rahman-Toney) tonight. I'm not that much of an ingrate to dis' them after they're paying me. I'll be happy to speak to you on Sunday morning, though."
That tongue-in-cheek pronouncement was greeted with the sort of heehaws I imagine were heard from the first audience that caught Abbott & Costello's "Who's on First?" routine.
As it turns out, Arum's tirade against De La Hoya, who now heads his own company, Golden Boy Promotions, and De La Hoya's presumed enablers at HBO, had only just begun.
"Recently, unfortunately, what's happening in boxing, fighters -– encouraged by various entities involved in the sport -– felt that they could be fighters as well as their own promoters," Arum said. "Well, they can't be, just as I can't go in the ring and jab and throw left hooks and right crosses. Neither can a Swiss banker (that would be Golden Boy executive Richard Schaeffer) who has no background in boxing and no background in meeting the public, call himself a promoter. But as long as networks encourage that type of action, we're going to have a rough patch in boxing."
Arum further noted that a bout featuring one of his most marketable commodities, Puerto Rico's Miguel Cotto, that he had long ago reserved for the night of June 10 in Madison Square Garden -- the eve of the Puerto Rican Day parade in New York -- was now going against a pay-per-view card on the same date (Bernard Hopkins-Antonio Tarver, in Atlantic City).
"Some network decided, that of all the dates in the year, that they would do a fight on that date," Arum said. "And not only on that date, but to try to get the building that we had reserved."
"That's what you call cannibalization," chimed in King.
The accommodating Lampley, noting the location of some of the "boss scribes," as King likes to call the national media, said, "If anybody needs a glossary connecting the veiled references to the identity of the people to whom they were referring, Swiss bankers, fighters who became promoters, et cetera, see anybody in Row 2 or Row 4. They'll connect the dots for you."
So what did it all mean, this silly summit that didn't include the vow to dismantle even a single warhead? Just this: Arum and King are traditional promoters trying to protect their turf against what they perceive to be the infringement of revolutionaries within the industry, and if that means shaking hands, bear-hugging one another and faking smiles for the cameras, they'll do it.
They also have no problem trying to sell ice to Eskimos, sand to Bedouins or Mayweather-Judah –- at a suggested retail price of $44.95 -– to consumers who foolishly might be deterred from increasing their April cable bill because Judah lost a unanimous decision to Argentine long shot Carlos Baldomir on Jan. 7.
All these people need, obviously, is a bit of enlightenment from Bob 'n' Don. Judah's shocking defeat, the dynamic duo claimed while maintaining reasonably straight faces, has placed his back against the wall and sent a subliminal message to the masses that he has to fight harder now, or else. Zab is now more of a threat to Pretty Boy Floyd because he took an embarrassing pratfall against some wild bull from the Pampas.
Right.
"It's the hottest ticket in Las Vegas," Arum said of the pairing of Mayweather (35-0, 24 KOs) and Judah (34-3, 25 KOs) at the Thomas & Mack Center. "(HBO Sports vice president) Kery Davis said to me the other night that this fight has caused more of a buzz in the African-American community than any fight with which he's ever been associated.
"I really believe, as we sit here now, that this fight will do better than De La Hoya-Trinidad."
King seconded that seemingly ludicrous notion with his familiar hyperbole. "I agree with Bob. It's going to do better than Trinidad-De La Hoya. This fight is going to be a super, extraordinary promotion. You should join in because it's addictive. Don't be standing on the shore when the ship is out to sea, yelling, 'Bon voyage!' We want you to be on board."
The hook for this fight, as envisioned by Arum and King anyway, is the merging of boxing and hip-hop culture. Mayweather is managed by James Prince, CEO of Houston-based Rap-a-Lot Records, whose client list includes Juvenile and Scarface. Judah hangs with Def Jam president Jay-Z.
(Full disclosure: Philadelphia Daily News features writer Damon C. Williams provided info on the rappers, as my musical preference tending to run more to Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, the Beatles and Rolling Stones.)
"Every rap artist is going to be there," King said. "They are the bards of the ghetto."
Too bad Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur have passed on to the great beyond and can't continue their hot-lead dispute as part of the undercard.
Hey ... you don't suppose something could be done with computer graphics? You have to figure that if they had just thought of it, Arum and King would have been up there pitching the idea harder than a Randy Johnson fastball.
Giving the people what they want, even if they don't know yet that they want it, is what promoters do. And nobody does that better than these septuagenarians with their undeniably shiny track records.
"We're getting on in years," Arum admitted, "but I think we're still very vigorous."
Bernard Fernandez is the boxing writer for the Philadelphia Daily News and 15rounds.com. He was also served four one-year terms (2002-2005) as president of the Boxing Writers Association of America. For more boxing coverage, go to 15rounds.com, The Undisputed Leader In Boxing News.
