Arum Reaches Back to a Grand Yesterday

It was L.A.’s answer to Madison Square Garden. St. Nick’s Arena. Queensboro Stadium. Holyoke Arena. Chicago Stadium.

It was the Olympic Auditorium, and every Thursday night, 18th and Grand was the place to be in this town. The flower of the sports crowd gathered there. Movie stars from Gable to Ricardo Montalban, Jolson to Jose Ferrer, Douglas Fairbanks to Wallace Beery, even, sometimes, Charlie Chaplin jammed ringside. If you were somebody, you were there.

Henry Armstrong fought here. So did Joe Frazier. Floyd Patterson. Archie Moore, probably the best technician who ever laced on a glove. Sonny Liston main-evented here. Bob Montgomery. Benny (Kid) Paret. Art Aragon became Golden Boy here.

Titles changed hands here. Fighters died in this ring. Speedy Dado fought Panama Al Brown one year. He was to sell pencils in the lobby the rest of his career. He couldn’t see. Dick Lane used to slap fenders and describe “double toe-overs back-bend high-flip wrist locks” and other improbabilities on wrestling night. Lou Thesz gave some Academy Award performances here. So did Baron Leone.

It had the first lady promoter in the history of the game. Aileen Eaton, the lady-in-red, ruled here, the original Iron Butterfly, as tough as any welterweight who ever climbed in her ring.

Boxing was the king of sport then. Damon Runyon wrote of little else. Baseball was its only competition for the sports dollar. In the future was pro football, basketball and golf. The most famous man in the world was the heavyweight champion, not some pop singer. You couldn’t get a seat the nights Manuel Ortiz fought for his title (bantamweight). Muhammad Ali never fought there, but he was at ringside.

Jack Dempsey, no less, turned over the first shovelful of dirt at the ground-breaking in 1924. He was the champ then. He never fought there, but he later refereed there.

It was as much a part of L.A. as the Coliseum or Grauman’s Chinese or the ballparks. It outlasted Gilmore Field, Wrigley Field and the auto race tracks as they gave way to the tract houses and shopping malls.

Boxing fell on perilous times. Kids who were athletes found less life-threatening outlets for their skills. They could dunk baskets, catch or throw passes, hit curveballs or even putt for the big dough. They didn’t have to put their brain on the line every time a bell rang or a punch came.

Part of what had happened to boxing was, clubs like the Olympic had disappeared. Pugilism had no assembly lines. The kids with the great lefts had no place to practice or hone their skills. They either got a ball in their hands--or a shoe rag.

Nice people went to see the fights in those days. But they didn’t otherwise involve themselves in the business. It became a happy-hunting-ground for the rogues, con men, fast-buck artists who stayed just this side of grand larceny. They were colorful characters--Doc Kearns, Jack Hurley, Tex Rickard--but you had to be sure you cut the cards before sitting down to deal with them. Don King is their logical successor.

But Bob Arum is a departure for the prizefight game. Harvard-educated, an Eastern lawyer who was personally recruited by Bobby Kennedy for the attorney-general’s office, he was a far cry from the fight mob types who climbed into the ring with cotton swabs in their mouths and a water pail in their hands and double-entry bookkeeping in their plans.

Bob Arum got into boxing with his eyes wide open. He had been sent by the Justice Department to oversee the distribution of proceeds for the Liston-Patterson bout, which were in some dispute (fight revenues usually are).

Arum became a partner in the prestigious Louis Nizer law firm, the New York Yankees of jurisprudence at the time, but he found himself more with pugilism than the torts of more legitimate commerce.

It was not altogether uncommon for Wall Street types to dabble in the fight game, but it usually ended up with their finding their pictures in the paper alongside guys named “Fat Tony” Salerno or guys who made their living with a machine gun.

Arum never got his picture taken with anybody who looked like a suspect in a barber shop murder, and he ran boxing as much as he could within the rules of propriety. He put on some 25 Ali fights, the famous Hagler-Leonard, Hagler-Hearns and Leonard-Duran fights. He was a pioneer in pay-per-view TV and has never been the subject of a grand jury investigation, tax scandal or other of the peccadilloes boxing is usually barnacled with. His checks are good, his reputation solid.

He is tough. Bob Arum is one of the few promoters around who could stand up to King and his merry claque. Arum projects no moral force. He treats the boxers as partners, not cronies, but he thinks boxing can be run as circumspectly as General Motors.

He is going to reopen Olympic Auditorium in the hopes it can get back to the grandeur of yesterday. “It’s no secret that boxing is not as popular as it once was,” he says, “and television shows it is skewing to an older and older audience. But it can be revived and on a profitable basis if run right.

“Las Vegas is not the linchpin it once was. Vegas is tending more and more to convention people and is becoming more family-oriented. But it is still as ready as ever for a major attraction.

“Our challenge is to build fighters into attractions with big followings. The heavyweight championship is always going to be steeped in its own glory. We have to rebuild the rest of boxing.

“There are plenty of boxers out there. It’s the opportunity that’s missing, not the athletes.

“We open with Oscar De La Hoya on March 5, and he can be a greater attraction than anybody named Sugar Ray ever was.

“The Olympic is the only arena in America that was ever built expressly for boxing. And boxing cannot go to a city and ask it to build it a venue. But all boxing needs is what any entertainment enterprise needs--stars. I have contracts with HBO, ESPN. I have put on shows for ESPN for 14 years, and we found stars.”

His proposal is to put on 24 shows in the next 12 months between now and next March, and ringside seats for the season will cost $1,000, with the second level of seats going for $750. There are some who think he should call it Operation Lazarus, but Arum insists boxing is not dead, it’s simply having a little trouble breathing.

You will be able to see the bouts from every seat in the 7,600 capacity building. Boxing, which used to be the citadel of second-hand smoke, will now have an environment where the contestants are clearly visible.

The first card will feature four undefeated fighters--De La Hoya vs. the Danish fighter making his American debut, Jimmi Bredahl, and super-middleweight champion James Toney vs. Tim Littles.

It’s an audacious undertaking. “It has to work,” Arum insists. “You can’t let a great tradition die just because nobody wants to work to save it. This is the ultimate sport and this is the logical place to restore it.”