PERHAPS the toughest question legendary promoters Don King and Bob Arum had to contend with during a media discussion at the MGM Grand last week was, ?What is the same about you two?? In town to promote the clash between their fighters, Miguel Cotto (Arum) and Ricardo Mayorga (King), the pair, through their respective demeanours as much as their words, highlighted how different they are and that the 79-year-olds tend to work with boxers who, in personality, could have been carved in their own images.
King, provocative and bombastic like Mayorga and clad in a shirt, tie, sparkly jacket, and what looked like bowling shoes, was introduced by a loud, colourful rap video. Arum, more methodical and calculating, in the same icy vein as Cotto, was awarded a tape as sombre as his attire, with respected figures providing testimony to the Top Rank boss? achievements.
King often talked over his long-time rival and recent collaborator, but Arum did not mind, typically cutting through the rhetoric to deliver the killer lines.
?Oh yeah, we was close to fisticuffs,? recalled King of past acrimony. ?Now we?re just happy when we get up in the morning,? quipped Arum.
The common denominators are they are workaholics who got their start in the business through Muhammad Ali. ?The first fight I ever saw in person was the first fight I ever promoted,? laughed Arum. ?Ali-[George] Chuvalo in Toronto.?
?Ali came to Cleveland and did a show for People Care [Hospital],? remembered King. ?He raised about ?90,000. He was in exile then, but Bob and I both started at the top.?
Indeed they did and, apart from a few blips, have resided around boxing?s upper echelon since, although Top Rank certainly possesses a far larger and deeper stable of fighters these days. One of King?s first shows was the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle between Ali and George Foreman in Zaire, but he and Arum would come together most successfully for the 1980 Brawl in Montreal pitting Sugar Ray Leonard against Roberto Duran. King and Arum agreed this was the best co-promotion they have staged.
?Between 1976 and 1980 there hadn?t been a closed-circuit fight,? documented Arum. ?We took a tremendous risk but it was charmed, everything worked. The fans went nuts, Leonard was on the cover of Newsweek. It was the first pay-per-view fight.?
King and Arum?s duopoly remained largely unchallenged throughout the next 20 years. The two powerhouses only worked together sporadically, exchanging more verbal barbs than greetings cards, but the formation of Golden Boy in 2001 and its subsequent growth has produced a new philosophy among these septuagenarians: my enemy?s enemy is my friend.
?A good promoter is not someone who sucks up to TV executives, gets a big rights fee, then goes to Chumash or some other Indian casino, not holding press conferences or not turning up for their fighter?s media day,? Arum stormed.
Never men to dwell rest on their laurels, the two pensioners ended the session looking toward the future and a megafight between Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather.
?I fervently wish it to happen,? declared Arum. ?Because if Don and I were promoting it, it would be something that would be remembered 100 years from now.?
King said he would be talking to Mayweather last week and that while ?Money? has not been receiving the ?right advice?, he would ?teach Pacquiao how to box.?
There was more ? King saying his rival reminded him of the biblical Matthew, the tax collector, and singing the national anthem to drown out an Arum tirade ? but the evening ended poignantly. ?The best is yet to come,? King promised. And it did not have a hollow ring.
