By Mark Vester
It was reported in the Baltimore Sun , that former heavyweight champion Hasim Rahman will take off for the rest of the year, and return to the ring in 2007. Promoter Bob Arum told the paper that Rahman's recent loss to Oleg Maskaev, cost the fighter a $4 million dollar payday against Wladimir Klitschko. When Rahman does return, the plan is to target a top-level opponent.
"Rock's still a name guy who could fight on either Showtime or HBO and still get $500,000," Arum said. "We're not going to fight a second-level guy, but one of the top guys - either a champion or a top contender."
Further, Arum told the paper that last Sunday's pay-per-view event between Rahman and Maskaev did "very poorly" at the gate, and on pay-per-view. It's not surprising. Most of the boxing public was against this fight being on pay-per-view, there was no attractive undercard, and the $50 dollar price tag was laughable.
"We're lucky if we did 100,000 buys," Arum said. "The gate did $1.7 million, when we hoped for at least another million."
