Many years ago, back when Bob Arum’s Top Rank offices were on the East Side and not in Las Vegas, I was kibitizing with his colorful “press agent, the Unswerving, Deserving legend Irving Rudd.
Once, when Rudd, heard someone describe a person as “Don King’s worst enemy,” I. Rudd took umbrage.
“Not while I’m alive,” Rudd snapped.
I flipped through Arum’s press kit bio and stumbled upon this “fact,” that as a boy in Brooklyn Arum was so deeply religious he became a Talmudic scholar.
I mentioned the note to Arum and he roared.
“Who told you that?” Arum barked.
“It’s in your bio in the press kit,” I said.
Arum then chastised I. Rudd for this harmless error.
I recalled the incident to Arum two nights before Manny Pacquiao clobbered Miguel Cotto and he laughed heartily.
“Hey,” Arum said, “once a Talmudic scholar, always a Talmudic scholar.”
I see that his new world junior middleweight champ and genuine rabbinical student Yuro Foreman kindly called his promoter “my second rabbi.”
I asked Arum Thursday why I did not get invited to Foreman’s celebratory luncheon.
“Too many goyim!” Arum said, using the term for non Jews.
Uncle Bob is the funniest man in boxing—next to the White Gorilla—when he wants to be.
