Beef with Top Rank and Arum

[craigus1990]

Great post and info... I have never heard of any of this.... Can you provide links to the quotes.... I can believe floyd got short-changed but can also believe that floyd and his crew owed money, probably from cash advances...

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more-sports/fight-personal-floyd-mayweather-jr-bob-arum-article-1.286596

That's the article about the Mayweather V Arum stuff but also just to add in 2010 Golden Boy filed a suit against Arum alleging that TR owed GBP money for Manny Pac fights.

Golden Boy, which owns a percentage of Pacquiao's promotional contract, is seeking damages "in the range of $3 million to $5 million, plus attorneys fees," Judd Burstein, the attorney representing Golden Boy, told ESPN.com, adding that because the suit was filed under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act -- the RICO statute -- damages would be tripled if Golden Boy wins a judgment.

Golden Boy contends that it is owed millions of dollars from Pacquiao's 2008 lightweight title bout against David Diaz, his 2009 welterweight title bout against Miguel Cotto and his March welterweight title defense against Joshua Clottey.

http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/boxing/news/story?id=5601657

There is shed loads of bad blood between GBP and TR and Mayweather Promotions/Mayweather and TR/Arum where unfortunately it has got to the point that both GBP and Mayweather Promotions won't do business with TR.

[craigus1990]

you are right and wrong

Arum tried like hell to make the margs fight in 2006 but floyd opted to fight judah coming off a loss and baldomir......

Cotto was probably protected by arum in 2005-07 but in 2008 would have been a huge fight with floyd but floyd "retired" and margs beat the hell out of cotto...

No you're wrong. Mayweather had already signed to fight Judah before he lost to Baldomir and in 2008 Floyd and TR had already parted ways and were no longer doing business together so regardless of whether Floyd was active or retired, those fights were untenable.

[BajanXLegend]

its an excuse so that cherrypicker doesn't have to fight pac

Manny Pac team/fans blamed bob for the bradley loss

[hectari]

Most of the ones who hate Bob Arum are Flowmos and they only hate him because whoever Floyd hates they hate, whoever Floyd likes they like.

remember when 50 cent was going to be the bomb promoter? they were saying TMT promotions 50 cent is going to take over and they were kissing his butt, and than when Floyd reneged and got cold feet after 50 cent invested 2 million and got a promotions license they started hating on him because Floyd beefed with him.

Just like how they hate Pacquiao because Floyd hates him, they big up Golden Boy and Haymon because Floyd does business with them.

They also hate anyone who is a threat to Floyds p4p ranking like Andre Ward.

The truth is Floyd owed Arum lots of money because used money he owed to gamble, this is the reason why James Prince came to Floyd's gym, Floyd wasn't making huge money like he is now but he gambled all the money he owed Prince, and Arum had to take care of it and pay from his own pocket that is when Ellerbe got whooped and Floyd was hiding in the back in a laundry dryer he stuffed himself in there.

[gauze]

has anyone ever noticed that you rarely see fights between a haymon fighter and a top rank fighter? the only one that comes to mind is williams vs margarito

[BIGPOPPAPUMP]

I have a simple question that i could never get answered....

Why is there so much beef and animosity towards bob arum and top rank...

I have heard all the stories about don king ripping off fighters but have never heard any fighter complain, or sue top rank and bob arum...

They have handled foreman's comeback, superfights of the 80's, de la hoya's career, floyd's career, chavez sr and chavez jr, pavlik, manny, rios, morales, cotto etc,, nobody has ever sued them or claimed they were crooks,,,

Then why does floyd have a huge problem doing business with top rank....

I never understood this,,, I understand that promoters can be shady, but never have i heard any fighter complain about top rank but floyd... and yes a fighter can make more if they promoted themselves but thats totally different than saying a promotion is corrupt and you wont work with them..

Whats the deal... does anybody know

Mayweather bought his contract out to get away. De La Hoya's departure was a legal battle. Victor Ortiz breaking away was a legal battle. Donaire tried to break his contract. There are plenty of other examples.

[megadeth]

you are right and wrong

Arum tried like hell to make the margs fight in 2006 but floyd opted to fight judah coming off a loss and baldomir......

Cotto was probably protected by arum in 2005-07 but in 2008 would have been a huge fight with floyd but floyd "retired" and margs beat the hell out of cotto...

No you're wrong. Mayweather had already signed to fight Judah before he lost to Baldomir and in 2008 Floyd and TR had already parted ways and were no longer doing business together so regardless of whether Floyd was active or retired, those fights were untenable.

And just so we can clear your mind of all those nasty rumors and insert facts, I'll post this oldie but goodie one more time.


Mayweather turns down $8 million to fight Margarito


Pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather Jr. rejected promoter Bob Arum's $8 million offer to fight welterweight titlist Antonio Margarito, and he instead exercised a provision in his contract to buy Arum out and become a promotional free agent, Arum told ESPN.com on Monday.

According to Arum, Mayweather turned down the career-best purse to meet Margarito on Aug. 12 on HBO Pay-Per-View, instead opting for free agency by buying Arum out of their deal for $750,000.

"I did hear from him," Arum said of Mayweather. "He decided not to fight this summer. I made him a tremendous offer. I think Margarito is the riskiest fight for him of anyone out there."

Mayweather adviser Leonard Ellerbe told ESPN.com that Mayweather passed on the fight not because he is ducking Margarito, but because he couldn't be ready to fight by Aug. 12. Mayweather injured his right hand during a dominating April 8 victory against Zab Judah.

"Floyd is not 100 percent healthy," Ellerbe said. "He has a bruised right hand. His hand is not broken. It's bruised, but it's a bad bruise. He wants to go into any fight 100 percent healthy. If Antonio Margarito happens to be the best available option when he is healthy, so be it.

"We are not turning down Margarito. I want to make that crystal clear. When and if he is the best available option for Floyd's next fight, that's the direction he will move in."

With Aug. 12 no longer set aside for a Mayweather fight, Arum said he will use the date to feature one of his other stars, heavyweight titlist Hasim Rahman, in a mandatory title defense against Oleg Maskaev on HBO PPV.

That bout, a rematch of Maskaev's 1999 knockout victory, took on greater significance last weekend in the wake of Wladimir Klitschko's title-winning knockout of Chris Byrd in Germany.

The reason: Among the four recognized heavyweight title holders, Klitschko became the third from a former Soviet republic to beat an American to win a belt, leaving Rahman as the lone American heavyweight champion and Maskaev poised to give Eastern Europe a sweep of the titles in boxing's marquee division.

Arum said Mayweather preferred to await the outcome of the May 6 Oscar De La Hoya-Ricardo Mayorga fight instead of committing to Margarito because he would prefer to fight De La Hoya.

"We're not sitting waiting on De La Hoya," Ellerbe said. "He's in a tough, tough fight with Mayorga."

Many in the sport believe a De La Hoya-Mayweather fight is the biggest fight on the horizon and the only one capable of generating 1 million-plus buys on pay-per-view.

The reason Mayweather opted for the buyout rather than waiting for the May 6 result was because the contract had a limited window for the buyout, one that expired before the De La Hoya fight. However, Arum said he would have extended the window if Mayweather had asked. What Arum wouldn't do, he said, was raise the guarantees for other fights outlined in the contract.

Arum said while Mayweather would have taken the $8 million to fight Margarito, he asked for a $10 million guarantee to fight opponents such as Miguel Cotto and Ricky Hatton, when Arum was only willing to guarantee $7 million.

Arum said Mayweather also asked for $20 million to fight De La Hoya, a fight Arum said he wasn't interested in participating in.

"That's not in the cards," Arum said. "He wants $20 million for the De La Hoya fight? It's not there. Sometimes, my man, you gotta know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. We'll talk about things down the road."

Ellerbe said Mayweather opted for the buyout so he could be "more in control of when and who he fights next. It's as simple as that. There is nothing bad between Floyd and Bob."

Arum agreed that the split with Mayweather was not on bad terms like their brief breakup last year. In fact, Arum said, "We intend to be back together. Everything with this was honorable and good. I had offered him numbers [for a multi-fight contract extension] that were livable. His expectations are in the stratosphere. He was entitled to buy me out, and he did. We decided this was the best way to handle it. He is a free agent. We have agreed to work with each other [in the future]."

The split frees Mayweather to make a potential deal with De La Hoya without Arum as part of the promotion. His involvement would have made making a deal almost impossible: The head of Top Rank has openly feuded with De La Hoya, his former superstar, and their companies rarely do business together as a result.

Arum said he was simply not interested in participating in a De La Hoya-Mayweather fight, but not because of his distaste for De La Hoya.

"I don't want to, because if I did that fight, I would be working for such a small percentage, it's not worth it," he said.

Instead, Arum is turning his attention to the Rahman-Maskaev fight.

Arum said that he and Maskaev representative Dennis Rappaport are about $300,000 apart on making a deal. If they don't finalize terms, the WBC will hold a purse bid May 1 in Mexico City.

But Arum is confident they will make the deal.

"We're very close," he said. "It will take another day to work it out."

Arum said he is already making arrangements to announce the fight at a news conference in New York on May 10. He added that the fight would take place at either Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J., or at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas.

Arum said Margarito could wind up on the Rahman-Maskaev card in the co-feature.

"But it's tentative," Arum said. "If Mayweather decides to fight in September or October, and Margarito could still be a candidate, I want him to be flexible."

Dan Rafael is the boxing writer for ESPN.com.

*Also, Mayweather only would've got $7 million to fight Hatton and Cotto. After Mayweather became his own boss, he was paid $25 million for the Hatton fight and 32 million+ for the Cotto fight.

Don't you hate how the facts can mess perfectly good rumors up?

[ShoulderRoll]

Pacquiao signed with Golden Boy at one point but then either went back on his word or Arum put some kind of pressure on him to return the signing bonus and stay with Top Rank.

[GrandpaBernard]

fans don't like bop arum because he doesn't deliver and refuses to make fights.

sure don king ****ed over his fighters, but you could say he treated the fans well with crazy cards

look at all the fights GBP is giving us this year. has tr done anything comparable in recent years?

[edgarg]

Mayweather claims that Arum shortchanged him on matches against Arturo Gatti in 2005 and Zab Judah in 2006. In the lawsuit, Mayweather said he was due 85% of Top Rank's revenue from the Gatti fight and 80% from the Judah fight. He claims Arum has refused to turn over the records for accounting. Mayweather has asked for the statutory minimum of $10,000 on each of the five counts, but would be in line for millions in punitive damages on a breach of contract claim.
This could get ugly before it's over, making it the heavyweight slugfest of the year.
In a strange twist, Arum admits that he owes Mayweather money and said he has told Mayweather's reps why he isn't giving it to him.
"There's no question we owe him some money," Arum said. "There's no dispute there. But he owes us a lot of money, and the people he's involved with owe us even more. After 98% of the money we owed him was paid, we stopped paying him for a reason.
"We're owed ... in the millions. We welcome this lawsuit. We wanted it to be filed. We have counterclaims and cross claims against certain other individuals involved with Mayweather. This is just the opening salvo in a major battle."

That is why Floyd and Arum do not do business together.

Other people do not like him because he has been caught bribing and admitted to bribing on more than one occasion. That should be an offence worthy of a lifetime ban right there.

You are not exactly telling the truth here. Let me say that BoxingScene has published quotes from other Arum interviews which corroborate-sort-of- your report. But in the one printed here Arum said that they DID owe Mayweather money, and were paying it regularly by agreement, and suddenly discovered when 98% had been paid that they had actually overpaid him, so immediately stopped payments. He said that the recovery wasn't worth the legal fees so they let it go. Your report, which I also previously read at some period will show the real situation, and I can guarantee that Arum won't be the loser. He's as clever as 10 acres full of foxes, and is himself a Harvard Law Graduate Summa Cum Laude (the very best), worked as the head of Robert Kennedy's IRS Tax Department for about 6-8 years before he turned to boxing. He promoted many or most of Muhammed Ali's major bouts, about 25-30 in all. He's no fool.

As for his "bribing" of officials, he wasn't caught as you wrongly state. He, along with over 40 other promoters (just about everyone) were giving evidence at an investigation into alleged payoffs to the IBF President, who had been caught in some other way. So they set up this enquiry. Arum refused to lie under oath, and told the truth that he had paid over $125.000 (?) to this guy to rank one of his fighters (maybe Foreman on his comeback-can't remember) . Then many others confessed. I don't think any of them were badly penalised although I'm not sure, perhaps heavily fined.

This was over 20 years ago, and yet you are still trying try to hammer poor old Arum with it. I wonder why you are so antagonistic to him.

Usually, in such cases, when there is no obvious cause-like now- and the person attacked is ***ish, the reason is nearly always Anti-Semitism either acknowledged or subconscious. This has been recognised in medicine as a mental disease.