Bob Arum hopes his fighters understand that boxing will return to a different economic environment than before the COVID-19 crisis began.
Promoters will lose one revenue stream, at least in the short term, because they won’t be able make money from ticket sales. License fees from television networks and streaming services could compensate for some of those losses, but Arum won’t waste too much time haggling over purses if fighters aren’t realistic when the time comes to start scheduling fights again in a post-pandemic economy.
“Some fighters have different views, and after we talk with them, if those views make it impossible to use ‘em, next man up,” Arum told Chris Mannix during the most recent episode of Sports Illustrated’s boxing podcast. “Nobody in this situation is indispensable. In other words, we have like 90 fighters that fight for us. There are a lot of fighters that fight under Lou DiBella’s promotion or Kathy Duva’s [Main Events]. You know, again, fighters, I envisage, will be fighting for a place on these cards. If a fighter said, ‘No, I don’t wanna fight without an audience. You have to pay me more or I just don’t fight,’ that’s OK. I respect that. Next man up. Nobody is indispensable in this environment.”
Arum’s response was to a question Mannix asked about Terence Crawford’s comments on a previous podcast about wanting more money if his next fight takes place without fans in attendance because the unbeaten WBO welterweight champion earns a percentage of ticket sales, in addition to his guarantees.
“Well, I haven’t heard of that yet,” Crawford told Mannix last month. “But at the same time, it if was to happen, then they have to pay me more. You know, they have to pay me more because fighters of my status and on my level, we get paid for the people that’s coming there as well. So, you know, if I can’t get paid off of people coming, then I’m gonna have to get paid up front.”
Arum realizes he can’t force fighters to accept final offers, but he is willing to keep any fighter Top Rank Inc. promotes on the shelf, including Crawford.
“If we have a minimum, like one of our fighters,” Arum explained, “in a contract, a minimum, but we’ve been paying two and three times the minimum in a lot of cases, go back to the minimum and you work out the purse. Again, nobody can force any of ‘em to fight and nobody can force a promoter to use them. We’re gonna have to use those fighters who have managers and so forth who realize the situation that everybody is in.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.