Arum Is Not Prepared to Throw In the Towel

Don’t book that ballroom for the retirement dinner just yet. Forget the farewell speeches, keep the gold watch and don’t waste a minute speculating about the state of boxing after Bob Arum.

He isn’t going anywhere.

Oscar De La Hoya is saying that Saturday night’s match against Bernard Hopkins for the undisputed middleweight championship could be his last blockbuster fight, but don’t expect promoter Arum to fade into the sunset with him.

Even at age 72, without another Golden Boy on the horizon, with a pending FBI investigation focused on his Top Rank Boxing Organization, and with enough money to ensure a comfortable life for him, his wife, Lovee, his kids and several more generations, Arum said he isn’t close to retirement.

“If I said this is enough and walked away, that would be a sure prescription for getting old,” Arum said. “I would walk if there was nothing to do. You don’t stay just to stay.”

Even after 40 years in the business, Arum enjoys wheeling and dealing with everybody from fight managers to television executives, the challenge of plucking a no-name fighter from obscurity and trying to turn him into a household name, and the seemingly endless legal and verbal battles with archrival Don King and other promoters in the cutthroat business of boxing.

Although promoting De La Hoya-Hopkins would seem to require Arum’s full attention this week, he has nevertheless found the time to work on life after Oscar.

Having spent last weekend in Puerto Rico watching his prized 140-pounder, Miguel Cotto, win the World Boxing Organization title in a sixth-round knockout of Kelson Pinto, the promoter returned in full Arumspeak, claiming Cotto has a chance to be “the best fighter ever.”

Arum is already talking about matching Cotto against another of his high-profile fighters, Floyd Mayweather Jr.

On Saturday, hours before De La Hoya-Hopkins, Arum will hold a Las Vegas breakfast to hype a November match involving super-featherweight Erik Morales, his fighter, and Marco Antonio Barrera, who has a contract with De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions.

Arum also will include in this weekend’s activities Andre Ward of Oakland, winner of an Olympic gold medal at 178 pounds in Athens. Ward has signed James Prince to be his manager but is shopping for a promoter.

Morales, an established star, Cotto, a rising star, and Ward, perhaps a future star, all are sharing the De La Hoya-Hopkins spotlight this week as the promoter prepares for the years ahead.

No other Arum fighter will be able to duplicate De La Hoya’s success with the promoter.

Their courtship was awkward, their level of trust tenuous at times, and there was one ugly separation, but they reconciled, and the combination of De La Hoya’s talent and Arum’s promotional skill has been lucrative for both men.

The richest non-heavyweight ever, De La Hoya has earned about $200 million in the ring and, having successfully spanned the Anglo and Latino markets and become a top draw among women, millions more in endorsements. Arum, in turn, has earned millions for guiding the fighter in the right directions.

And to think Arum almost missed the boat ... because he was on a boat.

The promoter is the first to admit he didn’t pursue De La Hoya in 1992 when the East Los Angeles fighter was enriching his future by winning a gold medal at the Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.

“I knew this kid was a good amateur,” Arum said, “but I had never seen him fight.”

While promoter Shelly Finkel vigorously pursued De La Hoya as the world watched the fighter live up to his promise by winning the gold for his mother, who had died of cancer, Arum was on a cruise, unable to even get television reception of the Games.

After the Olympics, De La Hoya agreed to a deal with boxing managers Steve Nelson and Robert Mittleman calling for him to receive $1 million -- $400,000 of that up front.

One problem: Nelson and Mittleman, who is awaiting sentencing by a Nevada federal court after pleading guilty to bribery charges in a fight-fixing case, didn’t have $1 million. They didn’t even have $400,000.

So they came calling on Arum, who was renting a beach house in Malibu. They offered Arum promotional rights in exchange for $200,000 up front and $75,000 within a month.

“I figured it was worth the investment,” Arum said, “but I certainly didn’t envision Oscar’s potential.”

When Arum agreed to take the plunge with De La Hoya, Mittleman was so delighted that he pulled off his shoes, went racing across the sand and dived into the ocean, clothes and all.

It was Arum, of course, who would wind up swimming in money with De La Hoya.

De La Hoya, who was extremely shy, didn’t say much to Arum at their first meeting, but the promoter soon learned that De La Hoya could speak better than he had imagined.

“What first blew me away was Oscar’s ability to speak fluent Spanish,” Arum said. “Many Hispanic fighters who grew up in this country only know a couple of words of Spanish. But when I asked Oscar at a press conference to say a few words in Spanish after he had spoken in English, he repeated the whole thing. Then I knew I had something special.”

In his career, Arum also has promoted Muhammad Ali, Marvin Hagler and George Foreman. But it was De La Hoya, despite one breakup in 2001 after the first of his two losses to Shane Mosley, who had stayed with Arum the longest and whose career is considered his crowning achievement.

In De La Hoya, Arum had an articulate, good-looking and talented boxer at a time when the Latino market was expanding.

Under the guidance of Top Rank matchmaker Bruce Trampler, De La Hoya was brought along slowly, fighting no-names, or big names such as Julio Cesar Chavez and Pernell Whitaker who were over the hill. That earned him the nickname Chicken De La Hoya, but he has long since become more of a chicken hawk, aggressively taking on the best fighters of his era.

Whether Arum in the end shares De La Hoya’s sterling legacy is still in question.

Arum admitted in a 2000 federal racketeering trial that he made improper payments to the International Boxing Federation to get a fight sanctioned, resulting in fines by the California and Nevada state athletic commissions and disciplinary restrictions in Nevada.

And this year, the FBI raided Arum’s Top Rank Boxing offices as part of an investigation of allegations that include fight fixing, forgery and falsifying medical records. (Arum, on the advice of his attorney, has never commented on the investigation.)

Rival promoter King, an Arum nemesis, entered a news conference after De La Hoya lost to Felix Trinidad chortling, “The lights are going out in Arumville.”

That was five years ago Saturday.

*

THE FACTS

Oscar De La Hoya vs. Bernard Hopkins

World middleweight championship unification bout

Saturday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas

Card begins at 6 p.m.

HBO pay-per-view