November 26, 2003

"I think the sport is in bigger trouble than I've ever seen it since I've been in the business," says Hall of Fame promoter Bob Arum. "The only element of the sport that isn't in trouble are the events involving Hispanic fighters. We realized a number of years ago that the Hispanic guys would be very important to the sport and we concentrated on them. We never realized at that time that there would be a complete wipeout of opportunities for non-Hispanic fighters.

"With ESPN appearing to go bye-bye and nothing really on the horizon as far as fighters who could be called superstars, the sport, at least as a mainstream sport is in serious trouble. Now you can argue that maybe Lou [DiBella] went overboard [in comments made to Fightnews], but again, essentially everything he said is darn near accurate. So isn't it incumbent on the promoters, who are akin to owners of a league sport to get together, and in a cooperative way, try to find out what could be done to turn this thing around?

"This is the time for everybody to come together to try to find a solution, because if they don't, there ain't going to be anything to fight about anymore, except for those handful of promoters who operate in the western part of the United States, and whose fights involve strictly Hispanic fighters. There at least there seems to be some life in the sport. Hispanic fans turn out at live gates, Telefutura gets tremendous ratings, that's the flame that keeps the sport alive.

How did it get to this point?

I don't want to get involved in giving the reasons why this has happened because that would involve pointing fingers. And that's irrelevant now, The question should be asked 'what can now be done to revive the sport among the general sports fans.' That's what the discussion should be about. Not what went wrong. F--- what went wrong, f--- arguing it's this guy's fault, it's that guy's fault, it's the networks' fault, it's the promoters' fault, it's the fighters' fault, it's the managers' fault...that's all irrelevant. What's happened happened. Now the question is what can be done to revive the sport? What can be done to repopularize it? What can be done to present it to the public? What can be done to get the fans out to watch it?

Do you have any answers for that?

I have some answers, but if I had all the answers what would I need a summit for? I would just do it. A sharing of all ideas among the people and I'm sure that some of the younger promoters will come up with some ideas that maybe require the cooperation of everybody to effectuate. I don't think responsible people should allow the sport to die like this.

What's the next step?

I have determined that I am not going to lead this effort. That I'm going to participate. That I'm going to support it. That I'm going to attend once it happens. I think that as one of the few companies that is still successful in this sport, I think that if I led the effort, it would get even more of an outcry. So I think that Lou [DiBella] as a new promoter who has been on both sides of the network was perfect to call for a summit and I hope that others would join and all I said is that I am prepared to attend whenever and wherever it is.

This article originally appeared on FightNews.com on November 26, 2003 and was written by Karl Freitag.

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