Arum is Beyond Excited Over Top Rank's New TV Deal With ESPN
By Steve Kim
It was officially announced by ESPN and Top Rank that Manny Pacquiao's defense of the WBO welterweight title from Brisbane, Australia versus Jeff Horn will be a prime time telecast on ESPN on July 1st.
Bob Arum, the head of Top Rank believes that 'the Pac Man' is the perfect fighter to showcase on this stage.
"I believe so because obviously Pacquiao is a big star and we want to start off with a huge, huge audience on July 1s - that's the way to start," said the veteran promoter, who says this deal (which will see more fights from Top Rank on various ESPN/Disney platforms) was engineered and executed by Todd duBoef, the president of Top Rank.
This new relationship has Arum beyond excited.
"This is the best thing looking back on my career," he told BoxingScene.com on Monday. "The next big thing we did was the fifteen years we did a weekly show for ESPN - the longest running show of it's time and now to be back on ESPN doing this Pacquiao fight is tremendous."
ESPN at one point was involved with the Premier Boxing Champions series, but that relationship has dissolved in 2017. Currently, ESPN has a working relationship with Golden Boy Promotions.
When asked if this concept was any different than the PBC, Arum promised it will be - "very different, you'll see. It's very, very different. This will be on one network, this will be all planned and everything. The idea is to make this inclusive and the problem with the PBC when they started, the idea was to drive everybody out of the business.
"That is certainly not our plan. We want to make it inclusive, we want to do what we can to help people who are promoting other fights and so forth. There's plenty of room in boxing for everybody."
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com
