In the world of boxing the promoter is considered one of the shadiest or slimiest characters in the sport.
One moment they will praise you the other moment when you are no longer useful and past your prime they toss you to the young lions to create a name off of you.
Bob Arum the legendary promoter of Top Rank promotions, used to praise Filipino boxing legend Manny “Pac-Man” Pacquiao all the time.
When Pacquiao finally decided to be his own man and was tired of being used by Arum after realizing maybe his fight with Jeff Horn was a set-up since he didn’t accept a bout with Terence Crawford for low end money, Arum’s tune changed.
After Pacquiao lost his WBO welterweight title to unknown Australian mauler Jeff “Hornet” Horn in one of the dirtiest championship bouts on live television, Arum decided to let Horn challenge his undefeated young American Terence “Bud” Crawford for the WBO belt.
And to make things even more insulting, Arum floated around the idea of putting Manny Pacquiao on the undercard of Terence Crawford vs. Jeff Horn.
Is this how you treat a man who put his life on the line in the ring just to make you millions?
Arum started to say he cared about Pacquiao’s health, but if he cared about his health how come he put a late 30’s Pacquiao in with a young strong brawler in Jeff Horn?
Also Horn was headbutting and choking Pacquiao like he was in the WWE or something. The champion Pacquiao travels to this unknown challengers Brisbane, Australia backyard to defend his title with hometown cooking and the referee doing a horrible job by not deducting points or even disqualifying Horn for so many blatant fouls.
In countless interviews since the two severed promotional ties, Arum keeps referring to Pacquiao as an old man and pretends to care about his health and well-being by saying he fears for Pacquiao’s life now that he is fighting in his 40s.
If Pacquiao was still with Arum he would keep trying to put the old man in with his young lions, to try to build up his fighters like Terence Crawford.
It’s a shame because I genuinely thought Arum really did have a bond with Pacquiao. The way Arum would talk about Pacquiao when he was promoting him was like a proud father showing off his son to the world. Arum had never talked about any fighter the way he did with Manny, he would even vacation in the Philippines and attend birthday parties thrown by Pacquiao.
It would have been nice if Arum could have just let their business terms end on a good note and continue on with their friendship.
Arum doesn’t need to downgrade Pacquiao with comments about him avoiding Terence Crawford because he knew he couldn’t beat him, or that Pacquiao a true warrior who has many greats in boxing is now all of a sudden scared to fight his fighter.
If Arum is downing Pacquiao like this in public, I can only imagine the things he says about his former fighter in private.
At the end of the day this is boxing and it’s a business, and most of these promoters only care about one thing and that’s how much money you can make for them.
