PROMOTER OF THE YEAR BOB ARUM THANKS WBO FOR SUPPORT IN CHINA

LAS VEGAS ? Hall of Fame Promoter Bob Arum received the Promoter of the Year award from the WBO during the Gala Night Thursday at the closure of the 27th WBO Convention held at the historic Caesars Palace Hotel.

Arum, who spoke briefly at the podium, thanked the WBO for their role and support in China where Top Rank started promoting big time boxing starting last year in Macau and recently in Shanghai that positively put China on the boxing map.

?I would like to thank WBO for the outstanding help that they did in what we have done in the past year in opening up China... in staging big events in Macau and recently opening up for the first time real big professional boxing in mainland China,? Arum said.

With a huge market of more than a billion people, Arum, who first successfully promoted at The Venetian in Macau on April 6, 2013 and followed it up with five more events including a couple of huge Pacquiao fights, told the assembled boxing luminaries at the Caesars Palace ?I think it is the most lucrative thing that has happened in boxing in my lifetime...?

Aside from the WBO which sanctioned most of the fights in Macau and Shanghai, credit should also go to WBO Vice-President for Asia-Pacific Leon Panoncillo who organized a boxing commission, the Professional Boxing Commission (PBC) which supervised, resourced and appointed all boxing officials who staged the highly successful boxing events.

Photo: WBO officials Luis Bastista Salas (left), WBO President Francisco 'Paco' Valcarcel (2nd from right) and John Duggan (R) award Hall of Fame promoter Bob Arum as 'Promoter of the Year' Thursday night at the Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Photo by Dong Secuya.