Promoter Murad Muhammad has reponded to allegations of wrongdoing made in the Filipino press regarding the recent fight between Manny Pacquiao and Erik Morales. With Murad Muhammad, Q&As tend to be about 99% A, but read on because Murad makes some explosive revelations.
What are your comments on what’s coming out from the Phillipines. Are you still going to be working with Manny? What’s the status of all that?
There’s a lot of inuendo’s and accusations that don’t make any sense. First of all I have exclusive contract with Manny Pacquiao. My contract will allow me to sue anyone that tortiously inteferes. HBO is very aware of my contract, and anything that I said I was going to do, I’ve done just that and beyond. I promised (Rod) Nazario, and Manny Pacquiao now that I would make them millionaires. Well, on the 19th Manny became a millionaire. After that Nazario is put in a very precarious position because of the new team that just came in.
Let’s talk about the reality and the friction. And if you talk about what took place here, first it was the gloves, then it was the room, then it was the 40%, then it was Freddie Roach stepped beyond his call of his duty in negotiating with Arum, all of this didn’t make any sense whatsoever.
This fight no one knew was going to take place. I signed Pacquiao to fight Marquez, in the understanding that if we beat Marquez, then we’ll fight Erik Morales for the fee. The fee was $900,000 for Marquez and $1,750,000 for Morales. When I signed that fight, Manny as well as Nazario could not believe that I would get $1,750,000. Reason being, they thought that Erik Morales losing to Antonio Barrera, losing both of his belts, Pacquiao not doing well on the HBO telecast where we fought Marquez that HBO wanted to put us back into ‘After Dark’ which I was totally against.
I convinced them to give me $1.8 million to fight Marquez and I gave $900,000 to Top Rank, Bob Arum and I gave $900,000 to Manny Pacquiao. Now that fight was scheduled for the 26th of February. So what happened is Marquez, who felt he was entitled to more money.
I’m going to tell you something no one knows, Bob Arum and I were watching the play-off for the Super Bowl and I got a call from my lawyer, Fred Levin, and he told me that ‘Marquez was sitting in our office.’ I said ‘sitting in our office, for what?’ ‘He said, he wants you to take him over.’ So, I said, ‘you’re sure?’ He said, ‘yes, I’m sitting here with Marquez right now.’ So I said, ‘Bob, I don’t understand. Do you know where Marquez is?’ Bob said, ‘Yeah, in Mexico.’ I said, ‘No, Marquez is in my office.’ I said, “Marquez want’s to sign with me because I paid Pacquiao the kind of money, he should be making.’ So I put Fred on the phone with Marquez, my attorney, Fred and he verified it was true. So, of course, I said to Marquez, when I got on the line, I said ‘Listen, two things I do not do, in my social life, I don’t mess with someone else’s wife. I don’t care how pretty she is. And in my boxing career, I don’t tortiously interfere in anyones contract. Those are two rules I’ve had for over thirty years.’ And I said, ‘right now, you’re under contract with Bob Arum, and whatever your differences are, your ought to work it out. But let me say this to you in front of my attorney, I am honored you chose me to represent you, but I cannot represent you while you’re tied with another promoter. If in fact, you got one of the best lawyers in the country, my lawyer Fred Levin, but he will bear me witness if you would sue Bob Arum or Bob Arum sues you, it will take you from four to six months by the time the case is over. By that time, February, March, April, May, June is being sold and The network will not wait on you. And let’s assume you win, now Bob Arum brings you back on an appeal. So you’ve got October, November, December. You won’t fight for another year. Is it worth it? How many fights have you had with Bob? Two, Fulfill those fights. I’m quite sure that Fred Levin will help you get what you deserve. If you’re not fighting Pacquiao and you’re not fighting Erik Morales or Antonio Barrera, who’s out there that going to beat you? So go and fulfill your obligations, this way by February or March, or April you’ll be in the ring and by the end of the a year you now have fulfilled your obligations with Top Rank and if you want to come with me I’ll be honored to have you.’ My lawyer said, that was good advice. And right now, Bob Arum has Marquez in a fight, and Marquez, I assume will fulfill his obligation or they’ll mend their differences, I don’t know.
The reason why Erik Morales fight took place is because Marquez priced himself out. He felt that if Pacquiao was getting $900,000, he is the unified champion and he didn’t lose in the last fight, that he was entitled to $1.5 million. But what Marquez didn’t know, Arum and I had a rough time finding a gate. Finding someone that would take the fight. So as promoters, we owed it to HBO, because we were supposed to deliver the Marquez fight with Pacquiao, we owed it to our fighters, so we decided, let’s fight Erik Morales. Now, I knew my kid didn’t mind fight Erik Morales, because I had a contract to that effect and he knew his guy, Erik Morales wanted to fight Manny Pacquiao, so it wasn’t a brainstorm that he and I knew that once we agree that our fighters would follow suit.
Keep in mind, when we signed this fight last year, Erik Morales said he wants the Winning gloves. And I asked the question, what’s the difference in Winning gloves and Reyes gloves, etc., etc.? The Winning gloves protects Erik Morales’ hands. Erik Morales has frail hands, fragile hands so he asked to take the Winning gloves.
Now that day when we were fighting Erik Morales, what one writer wrote that didn’t understand, that date last year was my date. You see all the publicity it says Murad Muhammad, M&M Sports and Top Rank. I decided not to be ‘pigheaded’ and not to be greedy to promote Manny Pacquiao against an ordinary fighter just to save my promotion, I’m going to take the short cut to the real money, to the real level that Manny Pacquiao deserves to be on, and that was to ask Arum to join me on my date and I’ll fight Marquez to get to Erik Morales. So the deal was done last year. We were supposed to fight Erik Morales on July 30th. The reason we couldn’t fight July 30th, is we messed up our hand going into the second round. And we had a bad leg, and blisters on our feet, all the things that trainer shouldn’t do, but nevertheless, we had to fight Morales with one hand. So we couldn’t fulfill our date against Erik Morales, so we lost that fight. So this year, the same formula just repeated, just with more money, Pacquiao jumped from $750,000 against Marquez to $900,000 he was supposed to get on the rematch, to $1,750,000, unheard of. And if you do your homework, you’ll find out that Erik Morales who fought 11 times on pay-per-view for Bob Arum, has been with Arum for over 11 years had never made over $1.5 million. So Pacquiao made unbelieveable money for this fight. However, we did not get a guarantee from HBO, at all.
So there was no money guaranteed to Arum or me and a mystery because if you look at reality, Erik Morales, drew 200,000 homes with Antonio Barrera he did a little less than 300,000 homes. Pacquiao had no track record. He had brought bad ratings on HBO which was a 4, which is not suitable for an HBO telecast, you have to at least do a 5 or more, and Erik Morales lost to Antonio Barrera and there’s no belt involved. So two promoters were taking a gamble. A $5-6 million dollar gamble. Where was the gamble? $2.5 million to Erik Morales, $1.75 million to Pacquiao, then another 2 million to promote the fight. So if you add it up, that was 6 million dollars. We had the hotel that was sold out, they told us that they weren’t going to give any rooms, the least as possible, we said that’s no problem because I don’t ask for a lot of rooms, and Arum doesn’t need any rooms, so we need some rooms for the participants, for the undercards, etc. So the MGM Grand said, alright, we got them to give us $1.1 million. So we had 1.1 sitting there. Then we negotiated with HBO and we asked for the foreign sales, we wanted a million dollars and they gave us $750,000, so we had $750,000 there. Then we said to HBO, how about guaranteeing us at least a little over 150,000 homes. They said no problem, so they gave us $2.7 million if we would lose. And if pay-per-view doesn’t do 20,000 homes or plus, then we had 2.7.
So the Muhammad Ali law says, that you have to share with your fighter, everything that you got coming to you before he makes a decision how much he would get. Well guess what? When Pacquiao signed this fight, there was no money coming to me. When he was going to fight Marquez, there was $900,000 coming to me, and I game him the $900,000. There was no money coming to me for the Erik Morales fight, so he got his cake and ate it too. He got $1,750,000.
A week before the fight, some money started coming in, 2.7, the 1.1 of course we said in the beginning, $750,000 in which we took $350,000 of that we put into the pay-per-view market of HBO, so we didn’t get $750,000 if you take that off, it’s about $400,000. Then we said, if foreign sales is doing pretty good, we’re up to $650,000. So I put that into the agreement and gave it to the new management, I wasn’t obligated to that, but I wanted to show that I was a gentlemen.
This was a big risk. So you can’t tell what your pay-per-view subscribers are going to do until at least the night before the fight. So all the way up until the night before the fight we got our fingers crossed, we were hoping we were going to do well because the gate started to do excellent. We had no idea that the gate was going to sell out. It sold out. That was great for us. Then we had no idea that it was going to crossover [beyond Mexican and Filipino fight fans]. So with our hard promotion, our ingenutiy and abilities, our willingness to take this gamble…success. Today a success.
I have a trainer who said several things. Let’s look at what he said. Freddie Roach said, he negotiated with Arum. Now, remember, he said it, so that means he’s in violation for that tortious interference. Also Bob Arum is in tortious interference if he negotiated with Freddie Roach, so Freddie said, he negotiated, he got the 1.7 million but he went on and said he got 40% of the gross revenue. So now, he negotiated with Arum, he got 40% of the gross revenue and Murad came along and paid Manny the same thing and stole the 40%.
I said, well Freddie if you negotiated, why did you leave the gloves out? If you negotiated with Arum, why didn’t you put the Reyes Gloves in there? But Freddie you said prior to the fight, we should have fought Larios or Tapia. How could you make a deal with Arum and then say you should fight Larios or Tapia. So he said he got 40%, okay Freddie you got 40%, how much did Erik Morales get. Today they say Erik Morales got 40%. Oh, Erik Morales took parity???? Eleven pay-per-views, success with Antonio Barrera, success on his own, he gave Pacquiao parity? He was that skillful to get parity? Okay, let’s give you that. So 40% to Pacquiao, 40% to Erik Morales and 20% to Arum. Oh, I’m not deserving of anything? Oh y’all did all this without my contract? I brought Manny to this point, created this whole event, and I don’t deserve anything? That don’t make any sense.
All right, say Top Rank sympathizes with me, we took 10% and we gambled? It doesn’t make sense. So, I called Arum, and Arum said he never discussed a Pacquiao fight with Freddie Roach. ‘Why would I negotiate with a trainer? This is a lie.’ So I said before Arum said it, I said, gentlemen, use your common sense, Arum’s a Harvard graduate, Attorney at Law, former government man, very successful promoter, one of the leading promoters in the country. He negotiated with a kindergardener like Freddie Roach, who never negotiated a major deal in his life? Who are you insulting here? Or this is a smoke screen to create some kind of friction so no one will look at the reall deal.
Let’s deal with the real deal.
They talk about my suite. Without any exaggeration, the suite that I had over the weekend of the fight is the suite I’ve had for 12 years coming to the MGM Grand. The exact same suite. Everytime I come in when I’m there, when I’m negotiating, or doing business, they give that suite. So who would talk about a suite of a promoter that created the entire event and brought everybody there.
Secondly, they talk about the gloves. I’ve said it before, and now Emanuel Steward confirms it. I said, the gloves are no factor in any fight. I talked to Gil Clancy, quote he said, ‘Murad, you want to talk about the gloves?’ I said ‘Yes sir.’ He said, ‘Winning gloves, what are they supposed to be?’ I said ‘they’re supposed to be a glove with a lot of padding so they don’t punch.’ ‘Reyes Gloves, what kind of gloves are they supposed to be?’ I said, ‘punchers gloves.’ ‘One to ten, what kind of puncher is Manny Pacquiao?’ I said, ‘Gil, he’s a ten.’ ‘One to ten, what kind of puncher is Erik Morales?’ I said, ‘he’s a six and a-half.’ ‘Consider yourself lucky.’ I asked, ‘why do you say that Gil?’ He said ‘because, if your guy is the puncher, and the other guy is a lesser puncher, you just reduced him to a three, and now (Pacquiao) at six and a-half, so you still got the edge.’ He said, ‘ but do you think that Emile Griffith for twenty years we worried about gloves? Do you think Ray Robinson, do you think Joe Louis, when there was no such thing as arguing over gloves? Do you know what kind of padding we had in the gloves? But we got a knock out, didn’t you?’ I asked, ‘why is that Gil?’ He said, ‘timing and speed, that has nothing to do with gloves. Gloves don’t win fights.’ I said, ‘thank-you Uncle Clancy.’ I said to them, the exact same thing that what Gil Clancy said to me and I said to them we do not care about Winning gloves last year, and it was in the contract last year, it was in the contract this year, and furthermore and if you’re talking about fighting an Erik Morales who didn’t have to fight us, when you’re talking about fighting an Erik Morales who is no less a pay-per-view fighter, when you’re talking about fighting Erik Morales who is the biggest thing today that came out of Mexico, why would we worry about gloves? Gloves were our least problem. The name of the game was to get Erik Morales in the ring.
Fighters come in this industry for three reasons. To win the belt and we won several of them, to make money, we made money in the Marquez fight, and to make more money, and we doubled our money in the fight against Erik Morales. Pacquiao did not lose that fight. The corner lost that fight.
What I said to them in the Phillipines, I said ‘lets go and use Scripture. When Lot and his wife left the city of sin, God told Lot to tell his wife and his people not to turn around. And Lot relayed that to his wife. But his wife turned around. Did God chastise Lot and turn him into a pillar of salt? Or did he chastise his wife who disobeyed him? What I’m trying to say is that, God doesn’t punish the righteous and the innocent, he punishes those who do wrong and do bad. I didn’t take a beating that night, Pacquiao took a beating. I didn’t get cut that night, Pacquiao got cut. I didn’t lose that night, Pacquiao lost. So you’re telling me that I did all these things wrong that Pacquiao was turned into a pillar salt? I don’t think so.
The reason why Pacquiao lost that fight, is that he wasn’t focused, he wasn’t trained properly, he was overtrained. Had nothing to do with the gloves, we got hit more than any fight that we ever been in. And I said it and Emanuel Steward confirmed it, and may God strike me dead if I talked to Emanuel Steward. I said ‘if the Reyes Glove was such a punchers glove, why we would have got knocked out, by Erik Morales if he had Reyes Gloves on.’
On national TV they put the gloves in the hand of Emanuel Steward and he confirmed that the gloves from the Asian world where Manny is from protects the hand and doesn’t allow you to close it into a real fist. The Mexican glove that’s from the country from Erik Morales, allows you to close it to a real fist. One has foam material, the other has horse hair. Horse hair is the glove of the Mexicans. He said, ‘but as much as I explain to you that this glove from Mexico is more of a punching glove, than the one from the Asian world, neither one of these gloves was a factor in this fight. However, if Erik Morales would have had the Mexican gloves on, he would have knocked Manny Pacquiao out.’ So, here we get a blessing in disquise, let’s assume that theory was a great theory that the Mexican glove would have been a great glove for us. But on the night of the 19th, the way Manny Pacquiao got beat had nothing to do with the glove, had something to do with the skill of Erik Morales. It had a lot to do with the way we fought that fight.
Manny Pacquiao, don’t know anything other than going forward. And testing your chin. Throwing punches from every angle. This fight, he backed up, he walked side to side, like Jersey Joe Walcott, but didn’t throw any punches like Jersey Joe Walcott. He idled for almost 30 seconds when the bell said ding and ran to the middle of the ring and stood still. Poor attack, poor strategy and cost us big time.
Then I get a call from Howie Albert, I asked these gentlemen could I mention their names, and he said ‘why is Freddie Roach in the middle of the ring with that terrible cut, and the cut man working from the side?’ This is unheard of!! No way does the corner man, stand in front of the fighter and not get the hell out the way so the cut man can stop the cut. Well, Freddie didn’t do that. Freddie didn’t know what to tell them. Freddie never told him to go to the body. Everybody knows you don’t hit a Mexican to the head. So this is all a camouflage that we were mistreated, we were separated, we were sabatoaged I believe and more important than that, Pacquiao came to America with lambs, and the night of this fight he was walking with wolves.
Now how do you leave a lamb with the wolves? His wife didn’t talk to the native people that have been around him, his native people couldn’t even get to his dressing room, not even to his suite. His native people who were in the corner, didn’t know how he felt, how he thinks, how he talks, our entire boxing career that made him successful was upset in this fight. He was signing autographs 25 minutes before the telecast. People were coming in the room, instead of having eight people praying that usually pray with him, we had fourteen. This was all ludicrous what went on.
And I’m going to tell you something, that Bob Arum said to me. In the beginning of this fight, he said ‘my fighter is crazy.’ ‘So why do you say that Bob?’ ‘This is the wrong fight for Erik Morales. But he wanted it, so he got it.’ Then over a week or two into the promotion of the fight, he said ‘Murad I got an edge.’ I said ‘why do you say that Bob?’ He said, ‘your fighters confused. He’s going through two months of changing and bringing people on the board, signing…I got an edge over you now.’ Then about two weeks before the fight, he said, ‘the best thing that could happen to you now, is that Pacquiao could lose.’ ‘Why would you say that, I don’t have Erik Morales?’ He said, ‘ any man that switches up and becomes a whore deserves to lose.’
In the press conference, Bob Arum gave a magnificent speech, he said ‘I sit with the Mexicans.’ He already announced that he has nothing to do with the Filipinos. ‘I am sitting with the Mexicans. They are loyal to me, I am loyal to him. If anyone ever asks me, who was the most loyal, greatest fighter you ever had, he said I have to mention Erik Morales. For 11 years, I have never had a problem with Erik Morales.’
Well he was sending a message to Manny. He was showing Manny Pacquiao, that I’m interested in you.’ I got up and I said, ‘Bob, you’re correct, you’re loyal to the Mexicans and the Mexicans are loyal to you. Well, I sit with the Filipinos. I am loyal to the Filipinos’ because I want to camoflauge what he was saying to Manny Pacquiao. There’s an old saying ‘most fights are lost outside the ring.’ We lost this fight outside the ring. But, God is great, even though we lost, [Manny proved] he’s courageous, he’s not a quitter, he’s another Gatti, he will not give up and he fought hard. Then I asked Lenny De Jesus, ‘What happened here?’ He said, ‘the whole corner we were in kaos, they wouldn’t let me do my job, wouldn’t let me put water on his head.’ I said why is it so significant to put water on his head? ‘When the kid is shocked, it hurts, you got to wake him up, you got to bring him back. Freddie Roach said ‘no, no water, no water.’ You notice in the last round, I said the hell with you, I’m putting water on him. I put water on head and he almost knocked Erik Morales out.’
When I watched the telecast and when Pacquiao first hurt Morales and went to his corner, the guy had a bucket and said ‘put your head down. Put water on his head.’ So, what De Jesus said was 100% correct. The corner on the opposite side did all the right things. On our side, Manny Pacquiao was dry, the cut man couldn’t get to the cut in time. Freddie Roach was shaking in the corner. The other guy was crying, then he had a guy who has never been in anybody’s major corner as his assistant, who was in the spot where De Jesus used to be.
Let’s talk about what I’ve done and what they have done.
Pacquiao grossed $1.75 million. Freddie Roach took $175,000. How do I know this? The Federal Government, sat and told me all they deducted from his purse. I said, ‘how did you know this?’ He said ‘because I need to know what are you deducting from this kid’s purse and this kid must sign off.’ So why are you tell me?’ He said, ‘because no one told me that you paid Pacquiao. I sat with Shelly Finkel and Bob Arum and both of them told me that you paid Pacquiao. Now you are obligated to give us what is entitled to me, but meanwhile I have to tell you where his money is going. $175,000 to Freddie Roach.’ I asked Shelly, how much money did you pay Freddie Roach when Tyson had him in the first time he used him?’ He said ‘$180,000. So, lets round it off, $200,000.’ I said, ‘but Tyson was making $17-20 million. How much did you pay him in the last fight? When he was getting 12 million?’ He said, ‘$100,000.’ This is from Shelly. ‘Why is he entitled to $175,000?’ ‘I don’t know, that’s what he took.’ Let’s go on a little further. If you got assistant, that’s your assistant, not the fighter’s assistant. Then you pay the assistant. $85,000 to Justin (Fortune). I said, ‘$85,000 is what Freddie should have gotten.’ How did this guy who never made $5,000 in his career, get $85,000. ‘Shelly, you got to tell me?’ ‘I don’t know Murad, that’s what they took.’
25% of his gross revenue to Shelly and company. To the two lawyers and Shelly, 25%. What did they do to get 25% of this kid’s money? The lawyers and Freddie Roach told him that there was $3 to 4 million that I was holding back for the fight that they’re entitled to and I’ll give you this $3 or 4 million. ‘You give this 3 or 4 million?’ ‘Yes.’ So he gave him 25%. Because he was going to get another 3 or 4 million from Murad Muhammad. Wow, if me and Arum made 4 million profit, we would be very, very happy. But they must have known something we didn’t know because we didn’t think we were going to make no 4 million profit. We were hoping we would break even. But they knew that I have 4 million of the pay-per-view money. So Manny thought that I stole 4 million dollars from him.
So all over the Phillipines, [the newspapers say] they’re going to get the 4 milliion dollars back for Manny Pacquiao. So the fight is over they didn’t get the 4 million,what are they say now? ‘We’re going to sue Murad Muhammad for the 4 million, the 40% that he stole from Manny.’ I’m saying, this is called the pie-in-the-sky. They took theirs now, and Manny’s got to wait until he gets to Heaven before he gets his. The pie in the sky. The reality is that Manny Pacquiao gave away $175,000, $85,000 to Justin for the co-trainer, $25% of his purse to the management team, $20,000 to a guy who exercised him, $5,000 to a lawyer, I thought the managers were lawyers, but I guess not, $5,000 to the accountant. What accountant? He didn’t even get his money in, he got a new accountant already. Guess what? The guy who saved the fight, he got $8,000. Who’s that? The cut man. And they argued over that because he was supposed to get 10, $2,000 and Manny owed him the last fight, and $8,000 equals the 10. They told him ‘come on, give us a break, you don’t need to get paid that much.’ In fact they threatened to replace him with a guy from Golden Boy, a mercenary for $1,000.
Now I ask you, if you work for Golden Boy, and the fight I would like to have if I was Golden Boy is a rematch, Antonio Barrera against Erik Morales. Why would I help Pacquiao if I work for Golden Boy, and if you’re paying me $1,000 you think I’m going to do the best job possible? So when we shut that down, and told them there’s no way Manny was go into this fight with a mercenary or inferior cut man, when we have a guy that is exactly a cut man, then I found out later, the reason they were bringing this guy in, he’s a good hand wrapper. That means Freddie Roach realized that he doesn’t wrap hands well. I said it before and I’ll say it now, every fight we hurt our hands and it’s either the Reyes Gloves are no good or Freddie’s no good. Now it can’t be both of them.
In the Phillipines where I made it a big issue, I said ‘let Lenny De Jesus, who wraps hands, wrap the kid’s hands. He’s been wrapping punchers hands all his career for 40 years. Well they didn’t want to insult Freddie, so guess who wrapped his hands? The fighter. The fighter wrapped his hands on his own! Guess what? He didn’t hurt his hand.
This is reality. No one is saying this, Pacquiao has blessed to be paid almost more than every heavyweight that has stepped through the ring, except Mike Tyson, Byrd, and Klitschko. There’s nobody in his weight class on down other than what Antonio Barrera just did, have got paid what Pacquiao has been paid. So we have shocked the world in a short period of time. Made a hero out of this kid in the Phillipines, made a hero out of him with HBO, even though we lost, HBO loves Pacquiao because the way he could fight, yet I’m being ridiculed that I’m a thief.
Was this not deja vu when Larry Merchant said, I was $700,000, I got 4, Pacquiao went to 3. No body went kicking them when they found out that Pacquiao got $540,000. He got $500,000 5 weeks before he stepped into the ring and he got $40,000 on a bonus that was signed 4 weeks before the fight. How I proved that, I showed all that to Jab, and Jab said there’s a big mistake here, but noone recanted it. So I went from stealing $400,000 out or 7 which is a lie, to the point that in this fight I stole 40% that I gave to Pacquiao which is ludicrous, I didn’t have it to give and no promoter would give somebody something on an assumption. We were crossing our fingers and praying that we do well.
So how does all this come about? They want the people to keep their eyes off of two things. One, the worst ever in the history of our career with Manny Pacquiao called divide and conquer took place that a fighter lost his fight outside the ring. Two, that not only did Pacquiao give $700,000 to all the figures that I just gave you, but the Federal Government snatched up $535,000. You add this up and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know this kid went home with only $400,000. It is a disgrace.
