Top Rank CEO Bob Arum has reignited his war of words with UFC head honcho Dana White by insisting the MMA promoters fighters “don’t get paid anything”.
In conversation with fellow Hall of Fame promoter Frank Warren, Arum said of the UFC talent: “they fight where he tells them to fight. He sets the purses, and if they don’t like it he goes somewhere else.”
“We promote in a very competitive arena… the fighters are able to capitalise on that and get purses that are much, much bigger than the amounts the UFC guys get because they have a monopoly.”
The latest in the Arum-White back-and-forth comes just days after Dana declared to Frank Warren’s Heavyweight Podcast that boxing was a “sh*tshow” and it was “hard to articulate how messed up it was”.
88-year-old Arum came to the defence of the sport and it’s athletes though and said “our participants are paid like the independent stars that they are.”
Arum is no stranger to going after his MMA counterpart and in a recent interview with CBS said that Dana “should be ashamed of himself” for trying to promote fights during the Coronavirus crisis, finishing by calling White “somebody with a flawed intelligence.”
Both Top Rank and Queensberry Promotions have postponed shows in response to the current public health emergency, with Queensberry’s Dubois vs Joyce event tentatively pushed back from April to July 11th.
Arum told the podcast that to be safe he has ordered his staff “don’t make plans… we don’t know how long this thing could last.”
In a wide ranging chat with Frank and Adam Catterall, Arum spoke at great lengths about his conversion from lawyer to boxing promoter in the mid-1960’s, his association with Muhammad Ali and even his current efforts to grow a beard.
Episode 8 with Bob Arum follows recent high profile episodes with guests such as Dana White, Ricky Hatton, Tyson Fury and even former speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow!
For more, Listen and subscribe to Frank Warren’s Heavyweight Podcast now wherever you get your podcasts.
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