By Chris Robinson

Legendary promoter Bob Arum will be turning 79 years old this Wednesday and his journey is the sport has been pretty remarkable. While Arum has played an important role in the careers of Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, Oscar De La Hoya and countless others, what seems to be most noteworthy is Arum’s longevity in the boxing game.

The twilight of Arum’s run in the sport has been heightened by his star fighter Manny Pacquiao’s incredible tear through the higher weight classes but Top Rank surely isn’t a company based solely on one fighter alone. WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto, featherweight titlist Juan Manuel Lopez, ultra-talented Nonito Donaire, Cuban standout Yuriorkis Gamboa and countless prospects and proven veterans all keep Arum busy on a weekly basis, whether working from his Las Vegas offices or traveling across the country and abroad.

I reached out to highly respected boxing writer Thomas Hauser, author of 37 works of literature on the sport, to gather some insight on Arum and his company. Hauser can be found ringside at some of boxing’s biggest events throughout each year and recently published what he claims to be his ‘best pure boxing writing’ with Waiting for Carver Boyd. We discussed Arum’s early days in the sport, how he found a way to keep up with the times, the work he has done with Pacquiao over time, and much more.

This is what Hauser had to say, in his own words, in the first part of our interview…

Bob Arum and Top Rank Boxing…
“Bob Arum has been promoting fights since the 1960’s. First with Main Bout and then with Top Rank. He does it very well. He’s put on big shows for almost half a century and put on some of the best shows in boxing. He’s very good at what he does. He has a very good organization around him. Don King Productions was basically Don. And while Don has some very good people working with him, like Alan Hopper and Bobby Goodman in the past, it has largely been a one-man organization whereas Bob Arum has a lot of very, very good people around him who have kept Top Rank on the cutting edge of new technologies and new boxing.”

The business of boxing…
“Bob is obviously very smart. He’s a very good businessman. He understands the business of boxing. If there is an area he does not know well, like the new media, he relies on somebody like Todd DuBoef, the president of Top Rank, who does. I don’t know him as well as a person but he has seemed to mellow somewhat over the years. He’s very good at what he does.”

Appreciating Arum…
“I was not in boxing in the 1960’s but obviously I studied that period a great deal when I wrote the biography Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times. And Bob Arum was instrumental in promoting Ali during that tumultuous part of his career in the 1960’s when very few people wanted to touch him. Arum got together with Herbert Muhammad, John Ali, Buster Mathis, Jim Brown, and they formed a company called Main Bout. And Bob was there, promoting many of Ali’s bouts during that period. There was a point when he wasn’t even allowed to fight in the United States and Bob had to go up to Canada for the George Chuvalo fight for Muhammad Ali. So that was when Bob cut his teeth on boxing and historically I can appreciate what he did.”

Promoting across the board…
“I was not involved in boxing when Bob promoted some of those great fights involving Ray Leonard, Robert Duran, Marvin Hagler, and Thomas Hearns. But historically I can appreciate it and subsequent to my becoming involved in boxing as a writer I watched Bob do wonderful work with Oscar De La Hoya, Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao. He’s done so many big fights that it’s hard to really point to one. He was instrumental in George Foreman’s comeback. He’s not dependent in any one fighter or any one network or any one venue. He has shown that he can build fighters and promote across the board. That’s impressive.”

Pacquiao’s run of success in recent years…
“Manny’s rise has been extraordinary. It’s interesting in that if you look at some of the fighters who have become much, much bigger in terms of the purses they have earned and the money they make, very often the key to it is beating Oscar De La Hoya. Floyd Mayweather moved to another level in terms of his marketability when he beat Oscar. Bernard Hopkins, Shane Mosley moved to a different level in terms of their marketability when they beat Oscar. That was when Manny Pacquiao exploded in terms of his earning potential, when he beat Oscar. So Oscar, really for the last decade, has been a steppingstone for fighters on their way to bigger stardom.”

A remarkable person…
“But that said, Bob has done a wonderful job of marketing Manny, particularly here in the United States. But he has a great product to market. I don’t mean to demean Manny when I refer to him as a product. Obviously he’s a remarkable person, but in terms of selling, whether it is the National Football League or the NBA, you are selling an entertaining product and Manny is a very entertaining fighter in addition to being a great one. I’ve been very privileged in that for Manny’s last four fights, starting with Ricky Hatton and Miguel Cotto and Joshua Clottey and most recently Antonio Margarito, I’ve been in Manny’s dressing room for the two hours before each fight and the time afterward. I’ve been able to see him up close in the most demanding circumstances. Not only is he a remarkable fighter, he’s a remarkable person. And what he is doing in the Philippines for his people is reminiscent of what Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis did here in the United States.”

A wonderful legacy…
“Nobody knows how long Manny Pacquiao will continue fighting, including Manny. My hope is that he retires relatively soon. By that I mean in the next two years or so. And [I hope] he is in good health as well and doesn’t come back at a later age when his skills have declined. History tells us that all too often, great fighters like Joe Luis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Muhammad Ali, come back from retirement and fight longer than they should. I hope that doesn’t happen with Manny. That’s premature to look at. What we should be looking at now is what could Manny Pacquiao do in the next year? Whatever he does, he’s carving out a wonderful legacy for himself.”

Forgetting Mayweather vs. Pacquiao…
“Floyd Mayweather has made it very clear through his words and deeds that he does not want to fight Manny Pacquiao. And I’ve stopped worrying about it. It seems to me that all this talk about Mayweather-Pacquiao takes the air out of boxing and a lot of good fights. Why worry about it? There’s not impendent to Floyd fighting Manny if he wants to. Very easily his lawyers could push the criminal proceedings back until the end of next year. Certainly the trial could be pushed back to the end of next year if not further. I saw recently where Richard Schaefer said it would be disrespectful to the judge if Floyd decided to not fight Manny now. But to me that’s silly. It’s no more disrespectful if he fought anybody else and if Floyd fought Manny in Las Vegas it would make the entire Nevada establishment happy and if a judge elected to office is part of Floyd’s criminal trial I’m sure he would be part of that establishment. Floyd just doesn’t want to fight him, fine. Floyd’s a very good fighter. I personally think Manny is a better fighter. And I’m not worried about that fight anymore.”

Chris Robinson is based out of Las Vegas, Nevada. An archive of his work can be found here, and he can be reached at Trimond@aol.com