BOXING / TIM KAWAKAMI : As Sport Sinks, a Fight Over Lifeboat

Were the past few days the opening shots of the last Don King-Bob Arum war?

If so, the timing is devastatingly perfect. While the sport of boxing sags and wheezes toward box office irrelevance, its two most powerful, reviled and stubborn figures are reviving a feud that, by now, both know neither can win.

And, by now, does anybody care?

This, of course, is nothing new. Over the last two decades, Arum and King clawed at each other, and their competition raised boxing to unbelievable levels of profitability and prominence.

Now, with both in their seventh decades, King under federal indictment and Arum sounding weary of trying to squeeze profits, they hammer at one another as the sport decays.

The recent hostilities started when, after two years of speculation about a grand jury investigation, King was charged with fraud involving a $350,000 insurance claim for a 1991 fight that was canceled. Arum, of course, celebrated the indictment, calling King “a cancer on the sport.”

But, anticipating the indictment, King had a counter-attack waiting. Four days after the indictment, he shocked the boxing world by signing one of Arum’s top fighters, Michael Carbajal.

“If Arum had paid more attention to taking care of his fighters and less calling me a cancer, maybe this wouldn’t have happened,” King crowed.

On Thursday, King was arraigned in New York on the nine-count indictment and released on $250,000 bond. Then he flew to Bismarck, N.D., for a fight card tonight. King might be facing a five-year sentence on each of the five counts and there are rumblings that more indictments against him are being considered in the U.S. attorney’s office.

Arum, of course, has his own problems.

Carbajal, a light-flyweight, was perhaps the fighter most closely identified with Top Rank, Inc., Arum’s company, someone Arum could, without cynicism, refer to as “family.” Carbajal fought for Arum only a week ago, winning the lightly regarded World Boxing Organization title. He never mentioned any problems to Arum, then signed with King three days later.

With No. 1 draw Julio Cesar Chavez in a career free fall and Mike Tyson still in jail, King needed Carbajal to shore up his Latino audience--and to hurt Arum.

Danny Carbajal, Michael’s brother and manager, said they felt “overlooked and taken for granted” at Top Rank as Arum catered to Roy Jones, Oscar De La Hoya and James Toney.

“Sure, I feel betrayed,” Arum said the day of the defection. “Here’s one fighter I didn’t tie up with paper because I really didn’t feel I had to. I could have tied him up for the rest of his life when I gave him $1 million in February.”

Arum paid Carbajal a record $1 million for his rematch against Humberto (Chiquita) Gonzalez, which Carbajal lost. That being Michael’s first professional defeat, the Carbajals then reconsidered their way of doing business, and, for the first time, listened hard to King.

Arum continues to threaten a lawsuit if Carbajal does not fulfill what Arum says was a spoken commitment to defend his WBO title Sept. 30 at Phoenix.

After Carbajal’s departure, however, some observers were describing Top Rank as a business in chaos. If someone as non-controversial and loyal as Carbajal could bolt, is anybody on the Top Rank roster a sure thing?

“Is it a blow? Yeah,” Arum said. “But who gives a damn? The Carbajal fights were marginally profitable. We made money on them, yeah, but they were marginal.

“Carbajal, if anything, has peaked. His last performance with Chiquita was nothing to write home about, and his performance on Friday was not great.

“He’s peaked. He’s been fighting since he’s been a little boy. Other than the Chiquita fight, there’s really nothing much for him in that division.

“It’s not a real big blow on a financial basis.”

There are other blips on the Top Rank radar: By necessity, Arum has dramatically scaled back expectations for the shows at the Grand Olympic Auditorium; another Top Rank fighter, Johnny Tapia, who spent several years in prison on drug charges, was arrested again for selling what turned out to be soap made to look like cocaine, and Jones, the International Boxing Federation middleweight champion, has been at odds with Top Rank and in contact with King recently.

Arum links most of it to the general decline in boxing interest.

“People don’t care about the sport, particularly younger people,” Arum said. “They see it and are repelled by it. People aren’t coming out for boxing. It’s true at the Olympic, it’s true at the Forum, it’s true at other places.

“We’re never going to do more than 3,000-4,000 people (at the Olympic), that I know. It’s not a big living, but we can survive doing it if we’re careful.

“It’s not the greatest of times or situations, but you make the best you can, hopefully something can happen that changes the perceptions.”

Such as King going to prison?

“It’s not only King, it’s what he’s done to corrupt all those boxing organizations,” Arum said.

Said King: “(Arum), his mouth dripping with venom, hatred, doesn’t realize that our destinies are intertwined. It’s a situation where what affects one directly affects the other indirectly. He said I was a cancer. And he has gotten so close to me he has the disease.

“We are inextricably bound together, me and Bob Arum. If we’ve both got cancer, at least I can deal with it more admirably and can generate more money because we know it’s a lethal disease. So, with the time that is left, I will make Michael Carbajal a superstar.”

Arum’s response was equally tinged with frustration.

“I’m a business man,” Arum said. “I have a lot of things I want to do with my life. I’m not going to go after a million fighters that I can’t use, where there’s no real market for them. I realize I’m in a sport that’s really suffering.”

Boxing Notes

Julio Cesar Chavez, in town to promote his Sept. 17 rematch, four years later, against Meldrick Taylor at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, acknowledged that he is fortunate to have regained his World Boxing Council junior-welterweight title and said his recent spate of disappointing performances was the result of a voodoo curse. “I didn’t believe in it before,” he said through an interpreter. “But I do now.” The source of the curse? “It’s something very personal. I won’t divulge. But a person very close to me.” Chavez, who says he owes Frankie Randall a second rematch, also said Emanuel Steward will continue as his trainer.

What was that brouhaha about between heavyweight champion Michael Moorer’s trainer, Teddy Atlas, and George Foreman on the podium during a news conference Thursday? Atlas says that Foreman muttered an obscenity at him when Atlas offered his hand moments before the incident and that he went over to Foreman to ask if he was joking. When Foreman told him to speak on the microphone so everybody could hear, Atlas pushed him, saying he wasn’t a carnival jackass. Although it looked like campy play-acting, given the startled looks on the faces of everybody involved and Atlas’ famous temper, it probably was somewhat genuine. “I think George is a con artist,” Atlas said. “He’s done a good job of it. I respect what he’s done. But I don’t know if I respect him as a person.” Said Foreman: “Somebody better tell that boy that this is all fake.”

On Sept. 10 at Caesars Lake Tahoe, Humberto (Chiquita) Gonzalez is scheduled to make the first defense of his International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Council light-flyweight titles since he defeated Michael Carbajal last February. The opponent is Juan Domingo Cordoba, and Channel 9 will televise it live.

Calendar

Today: World Boxing Organization junior-welterweight champion Zack Padilla vs. Juan LaPorte; Shane Mosley vs. Narciso Valenzuela, lightweights; Grand Olympic Auditorium, noon.

Monday: WBO junior-middleweight champion Verno Phillips vs. Jaime Llanes; Fabian Tejada vs. Mauricio Aceves, lightweights; Forum, 7:30 p.m.