By Edward Chaykovsky
Some laughed, some were upset, and others were furious with promoter Bob Arum's recent interviews where the Top Rank CEO compared Floyd Mayweather's negotiating tactics to those of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. In several interviews, including one with ABS-CBN North American, Arum discussed the possibility of a mega-fight between Filipino star Manny Pacquiao and Mayweather. During the interview, Arum said the fight was unlikely because Mayweather is acting "Hitlerian."
“I know you are younger, [but in] the second World War, Hitler did that to the world. When we look at our man Manny Pacquiao, there is more Churchill in him than Chamberlain," Arum said, referring to Neville Chamberlain, the British leader known for his policy of appeasement toward Hitler.
"He is gonna stand up to these outlandish statements and threats. He is not gonna let a bully like Mayweather bully outside the ring and push him around. You have to understand if you talk back to a bully and you take a strong position with a bully, then the bully can back down and then logic will prevail and it might very well happen.”
“But it won’t happen if you keep appeasing the bully. Churchill taught us all that. I think Manny Pacquiao is cut from the mold of Churchill.”
But, this is not the first time Arum used a Nazi analogy to describe Mayweather. In 2012, during an ESPN radio interview, Arum compared Mayweather to Hitler's propagandist Joseph Goebbels. He voiced his statement while reacting to Mayweather's demands for Pacquiao to undergo a random drug testing protocol.
"For two years Pacquiao has said that he will take any drug test whoever administers it, so why is that still being talked about by Mayweather?" Arum said. "You see Mayweather is from the school of propaganda that Joseph Goebbels, who was Hitler's publicist, adopted. The more you say things over and over again the more people believe them."