Roberto Duran
Bob Arum took on Roberto Duran in 1982, two years after his “No Mas” surrender to Sugar Ray Leonard, solely at the urging of Top Rank matchmaker Teddy Brenner. Coming off back-to-back losses, Duran went to Brenner looking for a promoter to replace Don King, who had cut him loose. Arum wasn’t interested, but Brenner wanted to give him a chance. “OK,” Arum told him, “as long as I’m not taking a risk.”
Brenner decided to put Duran on the undercard of a show headlined by Alexis Arguello at the Orange Bowl. Duran agreed, but was adamant about not wanting to appear as a “prelim.” When they offered him the slot after Arguello — commonly known as a “walkout fight” because that’s what the crowd typically does — Duran accepted.
“We had 30,000 people in the stadium, and by the time Duran is finished we don’t have five — that’s how bad he was,” Arum said. “He wins, but it’s terrible. I said to Teddy, ‘What the hell do we do now?’”
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Duran (left) squares off with Marvelous Marvin Hagler in 1983.
Photo by: Getty Images |
“Pipino Cuevas is half washed up,” Brenner said. “Let’s do a fight with him.”
Once a contender, Cuevas was indeed a shot fighter. Duran stopped him in four rounds. Arum couldn’t have realized it at the time, but it was a critical juncture for Top Rank.
The money fights in boxing at that time swirled around the welterweight division and Sugar Ray Leonard. Arum worked on many of Leonard’s fights for a fee, but never had a true stake in them or much influence over the decisions. His biggest star at the time, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, fought at middleweight, where it was harder to find a lucrative match.
Duran would pave the way for Arum to change that.
The tide turned during preparation for, of all things, a Bob Hope Christmas special. Hagler was scheduled to appear with Leonard in a comedy skit that had Hope as the referee and Howard Cosell as the commentator, but Leonard had to cancel because of appendicitis. Arum got a call from a panicked producer — his friend, James Lipton, now host of “Inside the Actor’s Studio” — who needed to find a replacement on the fly.
One of Hagler’s attorneys suggested Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, but Arum said he was too small to be believable next to Hagler. Arum proposed Duran, who was in the U.S. training to fight Davey Moore at Madison Square Garden. Lipton was happy to have a recognizable replacement, but soon ran into another problem. Cosell didn’t want to work with Duran, who famously quit in the last round of a fight against Leonard.
“It was all the same ‘No Mas’ shit,” Arum said. “I said, ‘Put Cosell on the phone with me.’”
After convincing Cosell to lighten up, Arum flew Duran to the filming, where he met him. In the dressing room getting ready for the skit, Duran got his first up-close look at Hagler.
“He’s not too big,” Duran told his trainer, speaking in Spanish. “After I beat this guy Moore, I’ll fight him.”
The Moore fight provided an important marketing lesson for Arum. Though Moore was a New Yorker, he didn’t excite fans there. With ticket sales lagging, Arum approached an executive from a Spanish-language TV station for advice on how to better use Duran.
“You’re an idiot,” the man told him. “Don’t spend money on English advertising. Only advertise in Spanish.”
The fight sold out the Garden, largely because Puerto Ricans, Cubans and Dominicans went to see Duran, who was from Panama. Long before most, Arum gained an appreciation for the way the Hispanic market could move the needle in boxing.
He made sure that Hagler was at ringside for the Moore-Duran fight, hoping to prime the pump for a collision between Hagler and Moore. When Duran pulled off a stunning, one-sided upset, Arum thought quickly. He tugged his star middleweight into the ring to pose next to Duran.
“People see them posed together, that gives everybody the idea,” Arum said. “Finally, I get a big fight for Marvin Hagler.”
Top Rank had its spot among the quartet that would come to be known as the “Four Kings.” Hagler fought Duran.
Then Tommy Hearns fought Duran. Then Hearns fought Hagler. When Leonard returned from an eye injury a couple of years later, he fought Hagler and then Hearns and then Duran.
An incidental round robin that ran the entirety of the ’80s ended up producing nine fights. Thanks to Hagler and Duran, Arum promoted or co-promoted five of the last six.
During negotiations for Leonard-Hagler, the two fighter camps were at odds over who would promote. Arum solved it by paying Leonard $11 million for his side of the fight and offering Hagler $12 million and his usual upside on the pay-per-view. Hagler ended up making $19 million, while Leonard got $12 million.
Hagler also was at the center of a decision that portended a move Arum would make almost three decades later, when he famously and fractiously moved Manny Pacquiao from HBO to rival premium network Showtime and its parent, CBS.
In negotiating a fight between Hagler and John “The Beast” Mugabi, Arum realized that the fighters’ demands would go beyond what he could secure from HBO. So he approached HBO Sports head Seth Abraham about taking the fight to closed circuit. HBO could then buy the rights to air the fight on delay. Abraham was willing to consider it, but his boss wouldn’t hear of it.
Rather than bending, Arum called Showtime executive Peter Chernin, whose network had never aired a fight. “We’ll do everything,” Arum told him. “All you have to do is buy the delay.”
Chernin said yes, putting Showtime into the boxing business, where it remains today.
George Foreman
The George Foreman comeback was even more unlikely than Roberto Duran’s.
It began when Foreman phoned Arum’s office out of the blue in 1982. Arum took the call, but he was wary. Out of action for 10 years, Foreman was four fights into a return that Arum had publicly ridiculed. He remembered how surly Foreman had been in his prime as a heavyweight champion. “I mean, I detested him,” Arum said.
Foreman asked to appear on one of Arum’s shows on ESPN.
“George, please, I’m busy,” Arum told him. “I’m not interested.”
Foreman persisted. He wanted to pay his own way to meet with Arum in Las Vegas.
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Foreman learned to embrace food as part of his schtick as a middle-aged everyman.
Photo by: Getty Images |
“He was really nice on the phone,” Arum said. “So I said OK. But what am I going to do? I mean, an old fighter. And an unbelievably nasty guy. I need that tsoris in my life?”
He agreed to meet Foreman for lunch at the Las Vegas Hilton.
“He came on so nice that I said to myself, ‘I have never met a con man as good as this guy,’” Arum said.
“Please,” Foreman asked humbly, “Can you put me on a show?”
Arum still was close to saying no until he remembered that he had a vacancy on his calendar. He was doing a show from Vegas for ESPN during the week of Christmas, which was less than a month away. The town always was dead that week. Restaurants closed. Visitation cratered. There was little hope of drawing a crowd, but Foreman might at least do a higher rating for ESPN.
“I’m going to lose money on the show anyway,” Arum thought. “So, what the hell.”
Of course, it didn’t play out that way. As word spread that Foreman was back, fans responded. Top Rank sold out all 2,500 seats.
While the show was a success, Foreman complained to Arum about the way fans and the media responded to his comeback. He didn’t like that they made fun of his age and girth. Arum encouraged Foreman to embrace the criticism, to play up the middle-aged everyman angle and turn it into a schtick.
At press conferences, Arum had trays of hamburgers brought in. Foreman cracked jokes about his own appetite and age. He would laugh all the way to the heavyweight championship — and to the bank, raking in millions from his fights and even more from royalties associated with his eponymous plug-in grill.
About two years after Foreman retired, he phoned Arum looking for help again.
“Bob, I’ve got a problem,” Foreman said. “They want me to sell my stock in the company.”
“How much are they offering?” Arum asked.
“$169 million,” Foreman responded.
“George,” Arum said. “What’s the problem?”
“How do I make it capital gains?” Foreman asked.
“I haven’t practiced tax law in a long time,” Arum told him. “Go get a tax lawyer and get some good advice.”
Arum chuckled.
“He treated it as capital gains and made the money,” he said. “Good for George. He turned out to be the nicest guy in the world.”
