Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Columnist Dean Juipe: Judges’ decision has Arum fuming, claiming fix

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4084.

Like a volcano waiting to erupt, Bob Arum progressed in stages, from calm to boiling to out of control.

Pensive and keeping to himself as he initially reached the press room following Saturday's fight, Arum built up a head of steam after he had a few minutes to collect his thoughts and harness his energies. It didn't matter that an impartial reporter tried to temper his emotive state.

"How'd you have it scored?" he asked me as we shared a couple of minutes.

When I told him I had Shane Mosley beating Oscar De La Hoya by a 116-112 margin -- or eight rounds to four -- he seemed accepting of the discrepancy, believing, as he did, that De La Hoya had won the bout with some ease. But within a very short time he was imitating Mount Vesuvius.

The blowup was not completely un-Arum-like, yet it had its troubling aspects. Once the bulk of the media had made its way through the exiting crowd of 16,274 and to the site of the post-fight press conference at the MGM, Arum's blood pressure was at red alert.

In a voice laden with disgust, he said he would retire, that he would never promote another fight in Nevada and that the state should take steps to outlaw legalized sports wagering.

If anyone had asked, he may have railed about Yucca Mountain or debunked the theory of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, too.

"Maybe (Arizona senator) John McCain is right," Arum said, prefacing his most outlandish statement of the night. "With all this money involved maybe we shouldn't allow betting on sports.

"The cancer is the betting. It should be banned. I think it's gotten out of hand."

While failing to make the correlation between the ability to bet on a fight and the outcome of Saturday's main event, Arum implied that the fix was in and that a betting interest of some sort had conspired with judges from three continents to deny De La Hoya a win.

For the record, judges Duane Ford (of Las Vegas), Anek Hongtongkam (of Thailand) and Stanley Christodoulou (of South Africa) each scored the bout 115-113 for Mosley. The fight was especially difficult to score early and the judges unanimously agreed on only one of the first six rounds -- the fourth -- while seeing five of the last six rounds from an identical perspective.

Amazingly, De La Hoya could have won the 12th round and salvaged a draw even though he was clearly fatigued and beat up in a good but not great fight that drew occasional boos from an anxious, albeit somewhat low-voltage, crowd.

But, his left arm dangling by his side although he denied it was hurt, he lost that final round as well and a fight in which the judges' decision was a difficult pill to swallow for someone unaccustomed to being on the short end of a deal.

"On Monday I will start a full investigation into what happened tonight," De La Hoya said, looking at a paper he held in his hand as if he was reading from a speech writer's notes. "I have the (financial) resources to put the best lawyers on this."

It was an awful thing to say ... much too bitter ... and it only added to the impression that De La Hoya (and Arum) had suddenly become a very poor loser.

"I'm doing this for the good of boxing," De La Hoya added, although this is hardly what boxing needs after such an otherwise cheerful night.

Marc Ratner, the executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, made a quick stop at the press conference before seeing he would only be inundated with ridiculous questions and excusing himself. "It was a close fight," he agreed. "But the judges made their decision."

Actually, as much as I like De La Hoya (and Arum) and wanted him to win, there wasn't any doubt in my mind that Mosley had dominated the second half of the fight and was a more than deserving winner. While I had predicted in print that De La Hoya would win if he could keep his left hand from splitting apart again, I'm here to tell you from my unimpeded seat in the fourth row that he definitely was not the better man on this night.

"We all had Oscar way ahead," Arum said, the "we" not including most of those in attendance, as the crowd within the arena saw the verdict as just and above suspicion. The decision was not greeted with much in the way of derision or any such nonsense.

"I don't want to get too upset," Arum said, already getting too upset for his 71-year-old good. "But something's wrong with this sport. How can all three judges have the same score unless something funny's going on?

"I'm really down on the sport.

"I'm out, I'm out of this. I think this was such a friggin' outrage that I'll never be a party to this again."

He said he would soon be done with boxing and that he was already through promoting fights in Nevada.

"I am going to retire and maybe Oscar should, too," Arum said, as if De La Hoya could never get a fair shake in the one state in which the sport is a major industry.

I'm told that those who watched the fight on pay-per-view or closed-circuit and were party to the commentary of the HBO crew might be siding with Arum and De La Hoya, because the HBO guys thought De La Hoya had won. But bear in mind that the HBO analysts are not always known for their accuracy and consider as well that there's a perception that they have an anti-Nevada bias that frequently surfaces when the topic is the subjective nature of scoring a fight.

There have been any number of times in which they've said or implied that any fight in Nevada is prone to poor officiating, but, in truth, Nevada is at the opposite extreme and is the only place in this country where a fight's announced outcome will almost always mirror what happened in the ring.

The judges got this one right, no matter how divergently they scored the opening rounds.

But the disputed outcome leaves De La Hoya's future, as well as Arum's, up in the air.

"I love boxing, I love fighting," De La Hoya said when asked about his future plans and his statement beforehand that he would retire if he didn't win. "We'll see what happens."

As for Arum, his matchmaker -- and the backbone of Top Rank -- believes this, too, shall pass.

"I thought Oscar won," said Bruce Trampler. "But we approved and endorsed the judges (beforehand), so I don't know if there's any room for complaint.

"You know how Bob is. He's an emotional guy. Sometimes he has three-minute rages and sometimes they last a little longer.

"Right now I think he's in shock."

Hopefully he'll come back to his senses. If he wants to be mad at someone he should pick De La Hoya's trainer, Floyd Mayweather, a blowhard who once again did something risky and ridiculous just three nights before the fight: He had De La Hoya spar seven rounds with Gary Jones, once a ranked junior middleweight, even though such a move goes against common sense and could have undermined the promotion.

Or Arum could look for a brighter side and pursue a second fight for De La Hoya with Fernando Vargas, who's more stationary than Mosley and a more willing combatant.

But quitting out of spite or boycotting Nevada doesn't do Arum, his company or his reputation, any good. He should tell De La Hoya "we lost ... let's move on" and do it before either one embarrasses himself any further.

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