By Michael Marley of The Examiner, special to BoxingScene.com

Top Rank head honcho Bob Arum said the suicide by hanging in a Venezuelan jail cell was "the first sensible thing" that undefeated world lightweight champion boxer Edwin "El Inca" Valero had done lately.

Arum, 78 and obviously worldly wise through a career first as a United States attorney and then four decades as one of boxing's leading fightmakers, was not being insensitive in his remarks to me Monday.  He was just being realistic.

"There's no need, no reason to play the blame game here. There were a lot of people, including his boxing manager (Jose Castillo) and Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, who tried to help this troubled guy out. I'm sure that Chavez and the government will help those two children (ages five and seven) who are left behind and now with a murdered mother and a father who killed her and then took his own life.

"I was shocked, really shocked, when he murdered the wife.  But I was not shocked to hear this morning that he killed himself.

A sensational brawl that will never happen: Manny Pacquiao vs. Edwin Valero (Pacland)

"I really figured it would end this way, starting from when he came down (from drugs and/or alchohol) and he realized what he had done to the wife.

"So am I shocked that he then killed himself?  No I am not, because I believed he then realized he could either kill himself or spend the rest of his life in a prison cell," Arum said.

Arum, who took on Valero for just two bouts under the Top Rank banner, said that Japanese promoter Akihiko Honda had warned company president and Arum stepson Todd duBoef that Valero had serious issues while living in Tokyo.

"Todd was told by Honda that Valero had some real problems, drugs and alcohol problems, real substance abuse problems. The manager is a nice guy, a feeling guy, and he tried to do everything he could do for this kid.

"What can you say now but rest in peace? Valero's smartest move, the only move he had left, was to take his own life. It is a tragic thing any way you want to look at it," Arum said. "He wanted to avoid spending the rest of his life in jail and this was his only way to avoid it.

Arum said Valero's gaudy 27-0, all-by-KO record and his boxing potential is all "immaterial' now.  But he did pause to reflect on what might have been in the ring had Valero's personal demons away from the ring not ended his wife's life and then his own.

It was clear that Arum fully intended to match southpaw slugger Valero against lefthanded puncher and Top Rank's chief client, Manny Pacquiao.

"I would have had him fight two more times, moving up to 140 pounds," Arum said. "He and Manny would have been a great fight, two so energetic and charismatic punchers colliding.

"I just think that this fight would have been a tremendous fight but now it does not matter.

"So be it, rest in peace."