By Michael Marley
If you think Topr Rank's CEO Bob Arum, who once promoted Floyd Mayweather Jr., has any real animus towards the troubled but undefeated boxer - you could not be more wrong.
Arum has some fond memories of the mercurial Mayweather if not of their business "divorce" which included a lawsuit against Top Rank filed by "Money May."
Arum, 79, puts his personal feelings aside when it comes to the bottom line.
The one-time Robert F. Kennedy Justice Department attorney and tax revenue bloodhound could be the most pragmatic politician since Lyndon Baines Johnson was in power at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington.
As Arum and wife, Lovee, prepared to board their Manila to Las Vegas homeward flight Sunday, the veteran promoter was trying to make sense of Floyd's latest stint in the Clark County Jail.
I questioned on Friday why Mayweather pays a salary to bodyguards when they don't protect the superstar boxer from getting in childish beefs like his "Poker Face" jabbing contenst with housing development security guard Shayne Smith on Nov. 15. Smith's allegations led to Mayweather's second stint in the Vegas facility this year.
I wondered about that and so does Uncle Bob.
"I never thought Floyd was any kind of bad guy, any kind of criminal type," Arum said after he and his wife returned to Manila after the lavish 32nd birthday bash for Manny Pacquiao in General Santos City.
"I still don't think that Floyd is a bad guy and I'd like to think he's a sensible guy. But this arrest...him going to jail again...this is the same old, same old for Floyd. The guy I'd like to think of as a sensible guy, well...he's looking like a guy with a hair-trigger temper."
Arum then put Mayweather's so-called security goons on blast.
"What does he pay them for? What do they do for Floyd? You've got people who do that work, then they go out into the parking lot and deal with parking tickets. That's why they call them bodyguards, right? They're supposed to protect the star. Floyd's not supposed to be even going into the parking lot and getting involved in something like this.
"It looks to me like Mayweather has nobody that he really listens to, respects enough to listen to," Arum said.
Arum said that he believes Mayweather's mounting criminal issues, including the assault allegations from the mother of his children, and allegations that he was involved in last year's car shooting at a roller skating rink - have made Mayweather the enemy of prosecutors in Vegas.
"The prosecutors must think he is a bad guy the way it's one incident after another," Arum said. "You can understand what their attitude about him must be at this point. To them, he looks like a guy who is really out of control."
