Bob Arum can envision a short-term solution which will allow for a steady stream of summertime boxing.
What the Hall of Fame promoter hasn’t yet been able to explore, however, is a plan to bring his higher profile clients or those currently outside of the United States back to the ring anytime soon.
“There’s a limit to what we can do,” Arum explained to Top Rank’s Crystina Poncher in the first of a two-part interview as part of the Catching Up With Crystina series. “It’s not going to be easy. Everybody has to be patient.
“We’re not going to be able to eight or nine fights on a show like we used to. We’re going to have to do more like four fights on a show. If we’re going to do three fight shows in a week, we can’t handle 30 fights. That’s what we’re discussion now, four-fight events.”
Top Rank was among the first wave of promoters to shut down its events in the wake of the ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, canceling its March 14 and March 17 shows to have aired on ESPN platforms from Madison Square Garden Hulu Theater in New York City. From there came the removal of scheduled ESPN and ESPN+ cards planned through May, with many notable boxers under the Top Rank banner left with nothing to show for lengthy training camps.
Mass gatherings remain a non-starter for the time being, despite upward of 20 states prepared to rollout economy re-opening plans in the coming weeks. Promoters have begun exploring the possibility of staging smaller shows without fans in attendance for the sake of keeping its prospects and contenders active.
“Our plans are hopefully to be operational by June, to get a secure facility either in California or in Nevada or in Texas,” noted Arum, with other states such as Florida also in play. “[W]ork with athletic commission so that we can work with ESPN to put fights on a regular basis. Maybe two or three times a week—of course, without spectators.”
That plan would exclude Top Rank’s high-profile boxers such as welterweight titlist Terence ‘Bud’ Crawford (36-0, 27KOs), two-time lineal heavyweight champion Tyson Fury (30-0-1, 21KOs) and unified lightweight titlist Vasiliy Lomachenko (14-1, 10KOs).
It will also impact its stable of boxers currently located outside the U.S., particularly the likes of lineal light heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev (15-0, 15KOs)—a two-time Russian Olympic boxer now based out of Montreal, Canada—and Japan’s Naoya Inoue (19-0, 16KOs), a three-division and reigning bantamweight titlist. Both were due to fight this spring—Beterbiev on March 28 and Inoue this upcoming Saturday—but will be out of the ring for quite some time.
“All of those are questions where I don’t really have the answers,” Arum explained regarding when his company can resume staging events at full strength. “The first order is business is I have to find out how we can get up and running in whatever format is required.
“If it’s not to do title fights, so be it. We’ll do the best we can. People will understand. There are a lot of good 10 round fights that we can put on.”
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox