Top Rank CEO Bob Arum thought he could leave all his worries behind when he stepped inside a luxury ship for eight days in scenic Caribbean recently.
Arum, the New York-born and Harvard-educated lawyer, thought boxing will finally take a backseat from his busy schedule. But he was wrong. Dead-wrong.
“I went on a cruise on board SeaDream and half of the ship’s crew was manned by Filipinos,” Arum told Fightnews.com the other day, hours after his arrival in his Las Vegas home.
The invitation to go on a cruise was extended by a dear friend and Arum found himself besieged with autographs by the Filipino crewmen who also asked him to pose for pictures with him owing to his association with Manny Pacquiao as the Filipino fighter’s lead promoter.
While the 76-year-old Arum is aware of Pacquiao’s immense popularity, he was amazed when he chatted with the Filipinos on board the SeaDream, which plies the Caribbean route from November to April, and in the Mediterranean-Europe from November to April.
Most cruise ships and other vessels are staffed by Filipinos and there was even one instance in April last year when crewmen of Skandi Neptune requested their offshore coordinator, Darren Ryan, to book Pacquiao’s bout with Jorge Solis that took place in San Antonio, Texas.
The vessel was in the North Sea at that time and Ryan said the ship was capable of receiving live feeds but the broadcast could not be completed since the request came five days before the event and Top Rank had to consult with technical people regarding the possibility of airing the fight, according to Top Rank publicity head Lee Samuels.
Now that Arum is back in business, he expects a hectic schedule in the next six weeks, and to kick off his busy itinerary in the runup to Pacquiao’s March 15 rematch with Juan Manuel Marquez, Arum will meet with the GenSan lefty sometime this week in Los Angeles.
“Everything is going smoothly,” said Arum, who doesn’t only expect a sellout crowd at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas but a big jump in pay-per-view sales as well.
When Arum vacationed in the popular Mexican resort of Cabo San Lucas during the New Year, he was asked repeatedly about the Pacquiao-Marquez rematch by Mexican boxing fans.
