IT'S BOB ARUM'S BIGGEST FIGHT
by Bill Kelly

It would have made a good underworld flick, introduced into the realistic milieu of American Depression-era films. John Ford could have directed it. Bogart or Cagney could have played the villain. They could have called it "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." Maybe a remake of 1935's "The Informer." A sure winner. It would have been a true cinema classic. An Oscar nominee.

It was enough to make Don King's hair stand on end. If he would have confessed to money laundering and bribery they would have went after him like Red Adair after an oil-well fire. Sent him to the Indiana state pen. Shot him at dawn. But King is too smart to confess to anything. He might be as windy as Texas, but they haven't been able to pin anything this guy since he was a baby.

Bob Arum, on the other hand, sang like Valachi before the Senate committee. Lanza hitting the high notes. Think about it, they tossed Abe Reles from a Coney Island hotel window for ratting out his cronies. If Albert Anastasia was alive Arum would last about as long as a rib-eye in Buster Douglas's kitchen. Anastasia, you will recall, hated tattle-tales the way a woman hates to tell her age. Didn't he have Arnold Schuster bumped off for squealing on Willie Sutton - and he didn't know Sutton from mutton.

In case you weren't listening, Arum willingly blabbed without immunity in the New Jersey racketeering trial of fistiana figure Bobby Lee. His every sentence was a masterpiece of construction and understatement in the imparting dignity and a civilized veneer to the barbaric sport he is involved in. He painted a dimmer picture of the sport of boxing than Howard Cosell did on his way to the bank. His testimony held the Senate committee smell-bound. Arum did something Don King's lawyers, his hanger-ons, and even Larry King Live couldn't persuade him to do --- tattle on himself.

According to the 68-year-old fight promoter, he secretly agreed to pay Lee, former president of the International Boxing Federation, $100,000 to authorize a 1955 heavyweight title fight between Axel Schultz and Big George Foreman. This, of course, raised the eyebrows of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, as well as boxing nawabs in neighboring California. Thus, an investigation was launched into Arum's background -- which had more wrinkles than a bedspread at the Norman Bates motel.

On the witness stand, Arum was the equivalent of Frank Costello doing a hand ballet before the Kefauver committee. As nervous as a pitcher battling out of a bases-loaded, no-out jam in the ninth. Before the hearing, he reportedly bit his nails so much, his stomach needed a manicure.

Arum testified that Lee wanted the money to approve a Foreman Vs Schulz ( not ranked by the IBF) match in cash. Arum, Lee and fight manager Stan Hoffman, met behind closed doors at New York's Mayfair Hotel to iron out the details. Guys like these throw their money away on high-stakes poker parties and chorus girls who like men who prefer women who know what men prefer. Bob Arum said he didn't even get kissed for his money.

According to Arum, his intention was to convince Lee to sanction a fight between Foreman and Schulz. Asked what was said at the meeting, Arum explained that Lee whispered that he expected to receive compensation of more than just the sanction fee for all of Foreman's impending fights. He said Lee asked for $500,000 under-the-table gratis. As a process of negotiation, they agreed on a payment of $200,000, $100,000 to be paid before the fight and $100,000 after.

If this isn't bribery, then wrestling is not all hokum.They sing "Mother Machree" at Italian weddings.

Arum came before the committee on August 15, 2000. His lawyers and commission representatives had already reached an agreement that the Nevada -based promoter would be fined $125,000 and have restrictions placed on his license for six months. Additional punishment included having him banned from attending weigh-ins and entering dressing rooms or the ring --which was tantamount to telling Vin Scully he could no longer sing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." Or buy hot dogs outside Dodger Stadium.

To Arum, it was just another day at the office. The boxing world was agog. His press agents needed smelling salts, but Bob couldn't see what all the fuss was about. I mean, he wasn't telling the world anything they didn't already know, right? Everybody knows there is nothing sacred in boxing. So what? Just as sharks need the Pacific Ocean to survive, so does boxing need men like Arum and Don King. Without them, the fight game would be as exciting as badminton. A Chevy Chase movie.

And so, Bob continued to mow his cronies down like Pretty Boy Floyd with a tommygun. In 1992, he said, he wrote a check for $10,000 to Ron Weathers, his co-promoter on various George Foreman fights. That money, he said, was an advance for Weathers' cooperation and promotional payments. Asked what the money was for, Arum said Weathers was going to pay $10,000 to Bobby Lee to get Francois Botha ( a Weathers fighter) rated among the top ten. It was kind of like a deal between Daniel and the devil. You sell your soul, then pay the consequences. You can't take the money and run. You belong to the devil now. There's no going back. You bought a life of crime. You owe it to the boys to participate in the heist. Like attending the wedding of your best girl. Watching somebody else raise your child. Sell your birthright. It's the rugged prize fighting business. If you don't want this kind if life, become a shoe salesman and live the life of Al Bundy. Guys like Jack Kearns, Tex Rickard and Mike Jacobs understood the quid pro quo.

Sure, you get all the boons -- a suite at the Waldorf. A limousine waiting for you at the airport, lobster dinners. Buy diamond rings for your wife. Rub elbows with the elite. But you can also end up like those guys on the wanted posters who used to chase mail trains.

Weathers admitted that he made the payment to the IBF in an attempt to set up a Foreman Vs Botha fight. Arum thought Botha wasn't deserving of Foreman. He said Weathers was Foreman's promoter, the man who had a close relationship with Big George, "He promoted many more of Foreman's comeback fights than we did."

There was another joker in the deck: Arum paid $500,000 to promoter Pepe Cordero ( now deceased) to set up possible Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini Vs Arturo Frias fight. At the time, Frias was WBA lightweight champ, having taken the title from Claude Noel via a 8 round KO in 1981. In the past, Arum referred to Cordero as "a bagman" for the WBA. He said Cordero actually dictated what the WBA did. "He was not an official. He was a promoter. But he had the clout."

Cordero, Arum said, got the WBA to rule that his fighter, Ernesto Espana, should fight Frias before Mancini, else Frias would be stripped of his title. In 1982, Frias retained his title in the 9th round because of a head butt, but Cordero got the WBA to rule that Espana should have an immediate rematch, Arum testified.

According to Arum, the WBA ordered him to fly to Puerto Rico for a rendezvous with Cordero, "which I did." He said Cordero said he would step aside for $250,000 and let Mancini fight Frias. If Mancini won, he was obligated to fight Espana for another $250,000. "He took me to the cleaners," Arum told the committee.

On May 8, 1982, Mancini kayoed Frias in the first round and Arum paid Cordero $500,000. Frias retired in 1985 after Bobby Chacon stopped him in seven.

Still, Arum told a New Jersey courtroom, he wouldn't exactly characterize the money he paid Cordero as a bribe. Politicians do it all the time and nobody mentions them in the same breath with Al Capone. I mean, it wasn't as if he beat up an old lady, robbed a poor box, slugged a cop, strangled a cab driver, stole from his mother, or went around telling kids there was no Easter Bunny. All he did was tell the truth and now he was being treated like a guy who had lost a sale and was getting passed over for a promotion. Justice is truly blind.

So what? It time, it will all be as forgotten as a letter addressed to "Occupant." You can win "Wheel of Fortune" if you can name all those who conspired to throw the 1919 World Series. For now, Arum was the patron saint of a new breed. Hadn't he given America's children their finest lesson in the artistry of honesty? St. George killed the dragon. Sleeping Beauty was awakened by the prince's kiss. Listen, you have to admire a neighbor who empties his own garbage. Perjury is against the law.

Meanwhile, Bob Arum remains the pardon who alters the course of this vaudevillian-like sanitarium inhabited by a psychologically weird combination of 'warblers' the likes of whom were recently displayed on pay-per-view's tasteless telecast of the Roy Jones Jr. Vs Eric Harding. These buffoons did more to assure the destruction of music than all the choruses of Tiny Tim. Did I say, music? It sounded more like a howling dog locked in a butcher shop. Sadly, it is becoming part of the American Lexicon. Get an exorcist.

Good taste, " decency and honor -- that's for jerks," was emphasized in "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang," by Paul Muni, who like Bob Arum, was driven to misdeed through temptation. Those words have cost more lives than the 20th Olympiad. ***

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