"Arum is the type of person that if you didn't do it his way, you are beneath him. He started off like that and now, today, he still hasn't learned that. So when you tell a fighter to go to hell and you use language that takes him out of his character, and that's being a world champion or even a decent upright human being, then you're going to have a problem with that athlete...That's what Arum did to Mayweather. He didn't care about all of the people that depends on him when he makes money, he don't care about his neighborhood in which he can give back to, so what he does is he slays Mayweather for $40 million and he slays Pacquiao for $40 million and what was his take? $20 million! So how does a guy with 20% of 100% have the right to say what's going to be and what isn't...It was easy for Arum to say he's not going to allow that fight to take place. The only thing he didn't like was that two of his former boxers, in Mayweather and De La Hoya, both collectively took that fight away from him, so of course he got hot with Golden Boy Promotions," stated promoter Murad Muhammad in this exclusive interview, where he reveals intriguing details about promoter Bob Arum. You don't want to miss what he had to say about his belief that Bob Arum is to blame for the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao clash falling through. Check it out!
PC: I wanted to start this off by discussing the reasons why you feel Mayweather vs. Pacquiao didn't happen, which is what we finished the 15-part series off with. Why do you feel this fight didn't happen?
MM: Well, in the history of the sport, one thing about Don King is he walked the walk and talked the talk. There was a Jewish fellow named Henry Schwartz, who was a technical genius. He put the satellite up in the sky and built his own techniques for closed circuit and he knew that he couldn't talk to the athletes, so he got Don King and went to Rockefeller Plaza in a suite on the 67th floor that overlooked the Rainbow Room. You would have to make reservations a year out just to get into this place, so it was very upscale. Don became very large. This man [Henry Schwartz] knew how to operate and maneuver and he used his ability to establish some of the biggest fights in the world with whom? Don King! He was smart. He was smart because if you're going to talk to this African American, you gotta know how to talk to him. Fighters have two sides, one that takes no prisoners and the other that is a human being. They have sensitivity and they have love, but you can't take sensitivity and love into the ring. You gotta know which one woke up that day. If the one that feels like he's a fighter that day woke up, then you can't tell him anything. You say the wrong thing to him and he will chase you out of the room. Then you have the other side of him that wakes up a decent human being and you can reason with him and he will close a deal with you with reason. Henry Schwartz understood that. If you look him up on the internet, you will see his history. He wrote a book about Don King and himself.
However, Arum didn't learn that. Arum is the type of person that if you didn't do it his way, you are beneath him. He started off like that and now, today, he still hasn't learned that. So when you tell a fighter to go to hell and you use language that takes him out of his character, and that's being a world champion or even a decent upright human being, then you're going to have a problem with that athlete. The reason he has a problem with him is because he cannot believe that a human being will attack him; especially because the fighter thinks he's rich. He thinks he's rich, but he's not rich. In the streets, we don't call that rich, but we use the N word and call that "Nigga" rich. They get a few dollars and they think they are wealthy. Bill Gates is wealthy. Bill Gates is rich. Until we get billions of dollars, and hundreds of billions at that, we are not rich, but the athlete came from nowhere and got a few hundred million dollars and hell, he thinks he's rich. So Arum can't talk to this man [Mayweather] like he's used to talking to him. Remember, that used to be his boxer. So he called him all kinds of names in this promotion and now, you expect him to do the right thing?
PC: So you think it was more of Mayweather not wanting to take any demands from Arum, who was badmouthing him?
MM: Yeah! Mayweather said, "Okay, I will do the fight." But he wants an excuse to do the fight. He says, "Tell Pacquiao to take a drug test!" Now, I'm quite sure if he wasn't ticked off, he might not have asked for that. He's asking for that to have a hook to hang his hat on. When his people come to him and say, "Why are you fighting Pacquiao when you know Arum don't like you?" He could come back and say, "Well, I made him take a drug test." You know what I'm saying? That was an excuse. Does he have a right to ask? Sure, he has a right to ask, but if you go to Mayweather and say, "Listen, my friend, is your mother rich? Is your father rich? How about your siblings and your children's children?" If he has any kind of sensitivity and love for his family, he's going to say, "You're right! Never mind. Man, don't be asking for a drug test. We don't need a drug test. We're going to whip him whether he is or isn't on any type of drugs." But look at it this way. For some reason, if he's on steroids and you find out about it and you lose, then you make you another fortune because the rematch will be bigger than the first fight. That's an insurance package if he is on something. That $40 million becomes $80 million and you do the math. You can give the other $40 million to your babies, to your children's children or the people in your city, which is one of the worst in the history of our country as far as unemployment is concerned; Grand Rapids is. If we start thinking about others and stop thinking about ourselves, we would be more successful in the world. But who is there to tell him that? No one!
When Mayweather did the fight with Oscar, Oscar made $150 million and Mayweather made $15 million. Whoever made that deal, they didn't know what they were doing. They gave Oscar the opportunity to have a miracle! Oscar does 7 to 800,000 homes, maybe even a million. Well guess what? They should have told Oscar to keep that. He can keep all of that, but anytime Oscar did over a million, it was because there was a threat on the other side. Mayweather was a threat, so you say, "Okay, I tell you what. You want to give me $11 million guaranteed, I will take it, but everything over a miracle, I want a percentage of it. Let's go the highest you've ever done, $12 million. Good! Take $15 [million], but if it do 2 million or 2 ½ million, I want 50% of that." Do you think Oscar would have said no? No! How could he say no to a miracle? But he [Mayweather] has no one negotiating for him. He had someone on the job learning or someone that didn't know. Ignorance doesn't apply when you're in a board meeting for the first time in your life and you have the opportunity to make millions and you blew it on ignorance. So what happened was Mayweather came back and realized that Oscar made so much money when he was half of the draw, so now he asked for something that could not happen. He asked for $50, $60, $70 million. Well Oscar knew that he could not produce that. You can only trick the people one time; you can't trick them twice. No one wanted to see the rematch, so Oscar said in good faith, "I can't give you that kind of money." So Mayweather gets angry and what does he do? Retires! That's what he figured he would do. "I'm going to just retire."
But I knew he would come back because Muhammad Ali once said, "This sport is blood. When it runs out, you will quit and until it runs out, you will keep going." That's true. Look at Holyfield and Roy Jones Jr. I told Roy that because he said, "I will never end up like Muhammad Ali." I said, "Don't say that because he's the greatest icon in the world. You can put yourself, George Foreman, Sugar Ray Leonard, Tommy Hearns and Tyson on one side of the street and put Ali on the other side and they will cross over just to shake the hand of Muhammad Ali. So don't say you don't want to be like Ali. Say you don't want to be in the game as long as Ali." But yet, he's still in the game and he's in the game because of competiveness; winning is still in his blood.
PC: A lot of people feel Roy is fighting for the money, but you would disagree with that, right?
MM: Roy isn't after money. Roy is wealthy. Roy got money. It's just in his blood and he's not going to stop until it runs out and it hasn't run out yet. This is the boxing world. Arum didn't learn that. Arum started off with the greatest of all time and he inherited that because of Don King's default. He inherited that and started off on the top. Arum didn't carry the position; when Arum went to Africa, he had no money. He had no money to pay the hotel bill or money to pay the athletes. But there was a guy from Italy named Sabatini. Rodolfo Sabatini paid everything. He became Bob Arum's mentor and private partner because Sabatini was there for him when no one else was there. Can Arum say the same thing about anybody else? Herbert Muhammad was there for Arum when nobody else was there, but Arum, today, lost or didn't allow his morality, his God consciousness, his honor and integrity to grow with him. Mayweather said that Arum owes him money. I can believe it; Arum owes me money. Bob Arum didn't pay me all of my money and he ain't trying to. He thinks that I'm just some crazy individual that don't believe that pay-per-view comes in big the first time, a little bit less the second time and a little bit less the third time. For the next 2 years, pay-per-view comes in and I haven't seen a check or any kind of expenses that tells me when it comes in. I didn't ask for it, so he feels he didn't have to tell me. So when Mayweather says Arum owes him, I believe it. Arum is the type of person who's like, "I am the man. You don't question me. You don't tell me what to do." But I say when you get too big for everybody else, you're just right for God.
Listen, do I hate Arum? No! When he almost got blown up in the plane and the plane almost crashed, I was the first one to call him to see if he was okay. When I thought he got me big time, he shook my hand in the UN and I wouldn't let him go. I grabbed his hand and called him everything under the sun: diabolical mind, evil man, the devil; I told him he had one foot in the grave and one out and he was hell bound. This took place in front of hundreds of people. He was trying to jerk away and I wouldn't let his hand go. When I say he had got me "big time," I'm talking about my fighter Arthur Williams beating Adolpho Washington. King had brought that fight to Mississippi, close to where Washington was born. Arum's fighter was going to fight a kid from Russia. Arum had Imamu Mayfield. I told Arum I would sign to fight under one condition; that was only if Williams made money for his next 3 fights, as long as he won the belt. He asked me what I meant. I told him, "This kid will go right back into poverty if you can't guarantee me that he makes this much with you." I wrote in how much and Arum agreed to it. Arthur Williams knocked Mayfield out in the 9th round and Arum never lived up to his word. Arthur Williams is struggling to this day because of that. It could have been different for him if Arum would have lived up to his word. He came back and said that I was right and he apologized. I stood up and saw his beautiful wife, and I didn't know that was his wife, and I asked him, "Who is this young lady?" He said, "That's my wife." I said, "Excuse me madam. I would have never said that to your husband if I knew you were his wife." That's a true story because I wouldn't have. I don't disrespect wives because wives don't deserve to suffer from their husbands and the children don't deserve to suffer for their husbands. What we do out there is what we do and we should take the responsibility, but our families shouldn't suffer. As soon as an African American slips, they don't give a damn about the children, the wives, the mothers or anybody that depends on them; they just slay him. That's what Arum did to Mayweather. He didn't care about all of the people that depends on him when he makes money, he don't care about his neighborhood in which he can give back to, so what he does is he slays Mayweather for $40 million and he slays Pacquiao for $40 million and what was his take? $20 million! So how does a guy with 20% of 100% have the right to say what's going to be and what isn't? I think that's unjustified, but that's just my humble opinion.
PC: You said something interesting to me the other day. What you basically said was that if Mayweather and Pacquiao would have fought, Arum would have received 20%, as you just stated, but now that Pacquiao is fighting Clottey, Arum is probably getting 80%. Could you explain that to us more?
MM: What happens is Pacquiao doesn't know anything about the promotional business. Pacquiao thought because Arum and I grossed $12 million, he made his $2 and Eric Morales made $2.5, and the expenses cost us about $6 million, that we split $5 to $6 million between the both of us, so Pacquiao felt that I was taking his money. Well, it wasn't his money because he wasn't worth $2 million prior to the fight. It was just something that me and Arum felt we could do and we had the ability to do it. I can remember Eric Morales going out to the press and saying that Pacquiao should shut his mouth and stop complaining about making $2 million. Morales said he had never made $2.5 million until that fight and he had been involved with 11 pay-per-views under Arum. Morales also stated that he wanted to leave Arum and join me because of that very reason. However, what happened was when I left Pacquiao, Arum was elated. Why was he elated? He was elated because now he don't have to share 50% of his cake. It was our cake, so Arum never touched Pacquiao's money. He was touching his own money that he created. So now that it aint the Mayweather fight and they have a fight with pretty much an unknown boxer in a major field, Pacquiao will get what belongs to him and Clottey will get what belongs to him and now Arum will make 80% of the revenue; and in a way, rightfully so. It's his creativity. He's creating it. Where else is Pacquiao going to make $10 million? So Arum can justify taking that type of money. He has no partners, so 80% of something is better than 20% where everybody else is going to make money. It was easy for Arum to say he's not going to allow that fight to take place. The only thing he didn't like was that two of his former boxers, in Mayweather and De La Hoya, both collectively took that fight away from him, so of course he got hot with Golden Boy Promotions.
[ Follow Percy Crawford on Twitter @MrLouis1ana ]