Bob Arum - Biography

Robert "Bob" Arum (born December 8, 1931 in New York City) is the founder and CEO of Top Rank, a professional boxing promotion company based in Las Vegas. He also worked for the US Attorney's Office for the southern district of New York in the tax division.

Biography

Arum grew up in the Crown Heights section of New York, with an Orthodox Jewish background, and is of Jewish descent. He attended Erasmus Hall High School, New York University, and Harvard Law School, where he graduated cum laude. He worked as an attorney in the United States Department of Justice and had little interest in boxing until 1965. He used his education and business savvy to become a boxing promoter, notably for Muhammad Ali, and during the 1980s became a driving force behind the sport, rivaling Don King. Arum organized superfights like Marvin Hagler vs. Roberto Durán and Hagler vs. Thomas Hearns.

Arum mounted the Hagler-John Mugabi, Hearns-James Shuler double header in Las Vegas on April, 1986. After the Hearns-Shuler fight, Shuler, who had lost by knockout in the first round, showed up at Arum's hotel room to thank him for the opportunity to fight Hearns. Ten days later, Shuler was dead in an unfortunate motorcycle accident.

Arum kept producing big-scale undercards and superfights, including the Hagler-Sugar Ray Leonard bout, the Leonard-Hearns rematch, Evander Holyfield vs. George Foreman and many others.

Some of Arum's superstars from the 1990s include former world flyweight champion Michael Carbajal and six-division world champion Oscar De La Hoya and current boxing superstars includes eight-division world champion Manny Pacquiao and three-division world champion Erik Morales. Arum promoted the legendary champion Julio Cesar Chavez in his late years of boxing.

Arum has concentrated largely on promoting Hispanic fighters in recent years, citing surveys which show boxing is among the most popular sports within the Hispanic community. He has had great success with fighters such as Miguel Cotto, who has won world titles at 140, 147 and 154 pounds, and Antonio Margarito, who held a 147-pound WBO belt from 2002-2007.

He has concentrated many of his shows in the Southwestern portion of the U.S., in cities with large Spanish-speaking populations. He's also the promoter of many of the cards on Telefutura, a Spanish language network.

Arum is a member of the International Boxing Hall Of Fame. He is married with a son, daughter, step-son and step-daughter.

Controversies

While working as a boxing promoter, Arum had been involved in many feuds and controversies.

In 1994, he was involved with John Daly for the High Noon in Hong Kong boxing event. The fights were called off at the last minute when Barry Hearn withdrew his fighters as no purses were forthcoming. John Daly blamed Arum when he said, "I've tried desperately to convince my partners to keep the faith. I offered them as much security as I could but it was not quite good enough. It seems I was ready to take the shots, but Mr Arum wasn't."

He has been involved in a forty year feud with Don King, who once called him a "rat fink" in 2000 for admitting during a federal trial that he bribed the International Boxing Federation president in order to gain a more favorable rating for one of his fighters. [1] [2]

He was penalized $125,000 by the Nevada State Athletic Commission in 1995 for a bribe to get one of his fights sanctioned.

In 2003, Arum complained about the judging in the September 13 bout between Oscar De La Hoya and Sugar Shane Mosley and suggested there was a vendetta against him from a member of the Nevada State Commission that led to De La Hoya's loss. Arum later apologized for the remark which commission chairman Luther Mack accepted. [3]

On the first week of January 2004, FBI agents raided Arum's Top Rank office in Las Vegas. Arum was on vacation when his office was raided, and the FBI originally declined to comment on the raid. The media reported that the FBI was investigating allegations that Top Rank was involved in fixing the rematch between De La Hoya and Shane Mosley, even though De La Hoya lost and Arum was De La Hoya's promoter. The federal agency also announced that it was investigating some of Eric Esch's fights, as well as the Jorge Páez-Verdell Smith fight. The investigation closed in the summer of 2006 with no charges being filed.

In 2007, Floyd Mayweather Jr., who Arum promoted from 1996–2006, accused him of both underpaying and undermarketing him while exploting his talents and manipulating officials. [4]

In 2007, UFC president Dana White accused him of "sucking the life out of the sport (boxing) and not putting anything back in." Amongst White's criticisms were that Arum had created a weak undercard for the De La Hoya-Mayweather fight in 2007 saying Arum did not promote the show correctly. "He promoted that show completely the wrong way, because he worried about the money as opposed to trying to secure the future", White said. "He should have stacked that card. He should have had Shane Mosley and Bernard Hopkins and (Marco Antonio) Barrera and Winky Wright on there and used it to show that boxing is back". Arum responded by saying that MMA fighters need to examine the revenues being generated and ask why the UFC wasn't paying them more. White made these comments not realizing that Arum did not promote the De La Hoya-Mayweather bout, and was not involved in any way with the fight. His only connection was being he former promoter of both fighters. [5] [6]

Arum also filed a lawsuit HBO for overstepping its boundaries in the sport by becoming a defacto promoter while trying to intentionally eliminate him as a promoter. Arum complained that HBO dropped Floyd Mayweather Jr. from his exclusive deal after he insisted his fighter have a tougher bout than the network wanted. The suit was settled out of court but Arum continued to criticize HBO by saying "Instead of working with promoters, like they have done in the past, they have become promoters themselves. They make the fights just like promoters and pay fighters", Arum said. "It's their money and they can do what they want, but Don King doesn't have to go along with it and neither do I. King and I can get along without HBO or Showtime...The problem HBO Sports got into is they became defenders of the status quo. They held you back because they had control."

In 2009, Arum defended Antonio Margarito when he lost his boxing license in the US state of California on charges of illegal hand wraps, implied it was racially motivated and stated that Top Rank would not come back to the state of California until the issue was rectified.

In late-2009, Arum called UFC fans "skinhead white guys". Bas Rutten accused him of racism for this remark. Arum also stated that MMA fighters are "guys rolling around like homosexuals on the ground." Earlier in the year, Arum described UFC President Dana White as "nuts" and "a little too much of a loose cannon" for White's use of a gay slur in reference to an MMA reporter.

External links

• BoxingInsider.com Biofile interview with Bob Arum
• NSAC Fines Arum
• Top Rank
• Interview