Sport

Top Rank king Bob Arum promises 2020 world title shots for Michael Conlan and Carl Frampton

Michael Conlan and Bob Arum in Belfast to announce Conlan's fight with Vladimir Nikitin.<br /> Picture Mal McCann.
Michael Conlan and Bob Arum in Belfast to announce Conlan's fight with Vladimir Nikitin.
Picture Mal McCann.
Michael Conlan and Bob Arum in Belfast to announce Conlan's fight with Vladimir Nikitin.
Picture Mal McCann.

Bob Arum goes way, way back. Back far enough to have met John F. Kennedy - he worked for his younger brother Bobby! Back for enough to have managed Muhammad Ali and to set up his now world renowned Top Rank promotional company along with Herbert Mohammad, Ali’s long-term manager.

Throughout more than five decades in boxing, the affable New Yorker, who turned 88 on Sunday, has shaped the careers of global superstars like Hagler, Hearns, Duran, Mayweather, Pacquiao, Cotto and many, many more. Now he is handling the affairs of Ireland’s own Michael Conlan and Carl Frampton. Andy Watters spoke with the great man who will be ringside at the Garden for Conlan versus Nikitin on Saturday night…

Andy Watters: Bob, you’re still going strong at 88. What’s your secret? Obviously you still love the boxing business as much as ever?

Bob Arum: I think that’s really true.

If this was a chore, at my age you couldn’t do it and you’d look for a way to get out. But I have fun, I travel all over, I get to meet these young athletes and watch their careers. Nothing could be more fun and since I’m the promoter of the fight, the most essential element is I don’t have to buy a ticket. I get a free credential!

AW: You’ll get into Madison Square Garden for free on Saturday night. Are you looking forward to getting back to New York?

BA: “Of course! How could I not? As soon as I open my mouth people say: ‘Well, this is a New Yorker’. I always love the Big Apple.

And it’s a really good card.

Bud (Terence) Crawford is fighting his mandatory against the undefeated (Egidijus) Kavaliauskas ‘the Mean Machine’. These eastern European guys are really tough. And then we have a real 50-50 fight – Richard Commey (IBF lightweight champion) against Teofimo Lopez, one of the up-and-coming kids in boxing.

Lomachenko has three lightweight belts and so we hope to have a fight in the spring for all four lightweight belts.

Then Conlan has the opportunity to avenge the defeat in the Olympics by Nikitin so those are three great fights that will be on the telecast on ESPEN. The stream on ESPN+ will have the other five fights, all of which are tremendous fights.

AW: Conlan versus Nikitin could have happened in Belfast during the summer. You’ll be relieved to finally get them both in the ring on Saturday night?

BA: It’s been a long time coming. Nikitin was the opponent for Michael’s last fight and then he hurt himself. He’s fine now and this is a significant fight. We look forward to it because of what happened in the Olympics.

AW: Nikitin’s points win in Rio was a disgrace. He has been bad luck for Conlan so far, is there any chance of another shock result at ‘the Garden’?

BA: Well if there is a surprise, it’ll be a surprise from the boxers and not from the officials or governments trying to interfere with the Olympics.

I thought that Conlan was brilliant after that loss (in Rio), giving the finger and putting it on Putin and the Russians for manipulating it but of course you heard Putin’s response… He said the Ukrainians did it, he pinned it all on the Ukrainians!

AW: You signed Michael for Top Rank after those Olympics. What did you see in him?

BA: Well he is a terrific fighter, we know that, but he is also a tremendous personality and a kid like that, who speaks so well and conducts himself so well and projects to the public so well, is a real plus for boxing.

We don’t get kids like Michael in the sport very often. He is a people-person and he represents the sport really well. There are other guys who are terrific fighters and some may be better than Michael pound-for-pound but there are flaws with how they approach the public and how they deal with life situations.

AW: Assuming that he wins on Saturday night, what are your plans for Conlan?

BA: He has a real quick turnaround. We’re going to do a mid-week event on the actual St Patrick’s Day next year starring him at the Theatre at Madison Square Garden.

We hope to have this new Irish middleweight Paddy Donovan on the card. He’s been on a couple of shows and he looks like a real comer. He’s trained by Andy Lee who is a really good friend.

AW: And after that?

BA: Then we hope for a world title shot. It takes time, it takes positioning but I promised Mick that no later than the end of next year he will be fighting for a world title and get his first professional championship.

AW: Who is the target for the world title shot?

BA: Once I throw out a name, the price doubles so I got to get it done surreptitiously and weigh up a couple of contenders otherwise they’ll have me by the balls, as they say, and we’d have to really over-pay for the fight and there’d be less in it for Michael.

AW: Of course, Mick Conlan isn’t your only Irish fighter. You are also promoting Carl Frampton these days. What are your plans for Carl?

BA: Carl has problems with his hands. He’s under good medical care and we’re going to get informed when he is ready to go and then my desire would be to have him fight for a world title against our fighting Marine Jamel Herring in Belfast.

It’ll depend on the time of year – either in the Odyssey centre or I guess Windsor Park outdoors.

He’s a great fighter, he’s really a professional. He fought an undefeated guy (Tyler McCreary) whose manager, who is an astute guy, thought he was going to win and Frampton just beat the hell out of him.

He is such a clever boxer and he knows how to damage opponents. I was very impressed, everybody was, with Frampton.

AW: Is has to be said that Jamel Herring is a big fella! There was a pic of you, him and Frampton in the ring in Las Vegas (after Frampton beat Tyler McCreary) and he was head and shoulders above both of you.

BA: Everybody is going to be bigger than Frampton at 130lbs. But they all weigh the same at the weigh-in. Herring isn’t the biggest puncher in the world and Frampton has a hell of a shot with him.

AW: Is it true that became involved in boxing after working in the John F Kennedy administration?

BA: Yes, I only met the President once but I worked under his brother Bobby who was the Attorney General and my boss and I had meetings with him about a couple of cases that we handled in the Justice Department.

I was the head of the tax section in the southern district of New York, it encompasses the borough of Manhattan where all the business is plus the Bronx and Westchester County.

Roy Cohn, who coincidentally became the mentor for our current President Donald Trump, had been involved in the promotion of the Floyd Patterson-Sonny Liston fight and the IRS got word that he was going to take the money out of the country, so Bobby came in and put me in charge of seizing all the money relating to the promotion.

We had to get all the gate money and the closed circuit money. There were 350 arenas around the country showing the fight, this was before the days of pay-per-view.

I had a guy in every box office and we came away with $5m, which was an absolute fortune in 1961. I handled the case, I took Cohn's testimony for 10 days and in that time I learned all about the boxing business, but I had never seen a fight.

AW: When you did get into boxing you jumped straight in at the deep end with Muhammad Ali?

BA: There was nobody like Ali and nobody will make the impact that he did.

Part of it is because of the unbelievable personality that he had and his ability to communicate with the public but also it was what he was communicating about. That was in the time of great social unrest in the United States, the time when the anti-war movement was getting started and when Ali announced that he wouldn’t go in the Army because the Viet Cong had never done anything to him, that was a real shocker.

His stand played out on the world stage, it wasn’t just people watching a fighter mature and exhibit great skills, which Ali did, it was a fighter, a personality engaging with the major issues of the day whether it be the Vietnam War or the social problems we had then rectifying wrong against people of colour.

He became an iconic figure in the way that guys like Nelson Mandela became iconic. He was much more than a championship boxer.

AW: So much has changed in the world since you started. How much has boxing changed?

BA: People are people and no matter how technology has advanced.

When I was promoting Muhammad Ali’s fights we would never have believed what they future held. If you’d told me back then that you’d have cell phones, lap top computers and social media I’d have considered you a loony-toon.

But people are still people and a good fighter, who is willing to take on all-comers and fight anybody and has a great personality and relates to people, that reverberated in Muhammad Ali’s days and it reverberates today. That part, which I think is the most essential part, is unchanged.

But some things have changed and because of the telecommunications advancements we are not limited to where the fighter comes from because we can send the signal all over the world at a very minor cost.

We are getting fighters now from distant parts of the world – whether it’s eastern Europe, or Latin America, or Mongolia, or Japan… Every country is developing fighters and those fighters can be seen in different places in the world.

In my day you would read about a fighter from Australia who was knocking out everybody but you never knew whether he could really fight or what kind of guy he was. But now when you hear about a guy from, say, Kazakhstan knocking everybody out you can see it – you see him knocking everybody out.

My company does 30 bills a year for ESPN plus 40 events from around the world. That’s why a kid like Paddy Donovan has been seen in the United States. All those MTK events are being shown here and they are getting surprisingly large audiences on TV.