Bob Arum might be the king of his own castle, but within the larger scope of boxing, he is as subject to external forces as anyone else.
As those of us who engage in frontier technology such as ?television? and ?the newspaper? surely know by now, Floyd Mayweather filled his September 14 date in Las Vegas by booking Saul Alvarez and his junior middleweight championship. For all intents and purposes, this fight is a) highly compelling; b) going to make one zillion dollars; c) going to serve as the black hole to which all boxing conversation will simultaneously gravitate and be engulfed by for the next 15 weeks. All of this is fully inevitable at this point. The best any of us who follow the sport can do is succumb to our fate and pray that nobody breaks a hand or assaults a security guard.
Despite what I?m sure were his most profane protestations, that includes Bob Arum.
As head of Top Rank, Arum has hitched the fate of his promotion to in-house stars such as Manny Pacquiao, Juan Manuel Marqez, and Miguel Cotto over the past five years. This is not particularly unusual of any promotional operation, except insomuch as Arum has behaved like a regional druglord with respect to the rest of the boxing world. He has rightly shouldered a healthy portion of the blame for Pacquiao and Mayweather never fighting, and is currently in the midst of Top Rank?s Second Cold War with Golden Boy. To say that Arum marches to the beat of his own drum would understate the terror left in the wake of his percussion.
Prior to Mayweather?s announcement this week, Arum had announced his intentions to stage Marquez?s fight with Timothy Bradley on September 14 in Las Vegas. Doubtless, Arum wanted to capitalize on the lucrative Mexican Independence Weekend, as he had the year prior with Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr. Chavez, you?ll recall, fought Sergio Martinez in Vegas the same night that Canelo Alvarez pounded Josesito Lopez ? also in Vegas. Likely anticipating a similarly victorious outcome for Top Rank, Arum comfortably booked the Thomas & Mack Center and Marquez for 9/14/2013, betting that Alvarez wasn?t the draw Golden Boy saw him as and that Mayweather wouldn?t come over the top of him.
The lesson of this week?s publicity: Alvarez is the attraction his promoters believe he is, and Floyd Mayweather loves making eight figure in one night.
Thankfully, Arum pulled his September 14 date and pushed Marquez-Bradley into October. There is, as we?ve already ceded, barely enough room in the sports conversation thunderdome for non-Mayweather boxing conversation, let alone another fight in Las Vegas on the same night. Forty-five people would have watched that Marquez-Bradley. Poor Tim Bradley might have finally snapped and given YouTube a great treasure (I would love to get Bradley?s opinion of Arum one day, but it would be absolutely brutal to tweak him into a tirade after getting his fight bigtimed and punted to Mayweather?s money machine. One day). It simply needed to happen.
Much though boxing followers recognize and respect Arum as one of the sport?s premier power brokers, this week proved that even he is second to Money May?s whims. The fact that Arum surrendered his date so quickly after dominating it so thoroughly in 2012 shows that even the chief of Top Rank knows he comes in second in this contest.
