As Boxing Withers Away, Arum Isn’t Too Far Behind

I met Bob Arum for breakfast and sat down across from a guy who has withered away to almost nothing.

I wasn’t surprised. If you’re making your living hyping boxing these days, what’s there to promote?

To begin with, the sport is barbaric and appealing only when the public can identify the names of the guys who are going to beat each other up, and most of those guys have retired or now sell grills.

I remember, though, when Arum was famous, beginning his career working for the great attorney Louis Nizer, tagging along with Bobby Kennedy and then promoting Muhammad Ali, dining with Howard Cosell and moving on to make millions for Oscar De La Hoya.

Now he’s the ringmaster for rotating freak shows, beginning in Staples Center on Saturday night with a tribute to old pugs such as Julio Cesar Chavez before going on to Las Vegas in July to capitalize on a year-old movie, “Million Dollar Baby,” for a fight involving two women.

It’s no wonder he doesn’t know where his next meal is coming from

“I’ve been trying to lose weight,” he protested, and I nodded as if I believed him, because I know how difficult it can be for some proud men to admit how down on their luck they might be.

“I hired a nutritionist, dropping from 217 to 183 and I feel great,” he said. “I’ve lost some weight, but I haven’t lost it! I have a plan for boxing, and I’m as excited as ever about pursuing it.”

I remember the good old days when Arum, 73, said he would never promote another women’s fight, but now he’s got a plan, he said, and fingers crossed that Ellen DeGeneres and Oprah will take notice. How the mighty have fallen.

“I know what it was like when I used to go into a restaurant, and what it’s like now,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Who is this guy? I’ve never heard of him.’

“I’m desperate to bring in women to the sport of boxing. I need people. I need people who speak English, as well as all the people who speak Spanish. We had a great fight in Vegas in March [Manny Pacquiao versus Erik Morales] and except for the Hispanic audience and Philippine supporters, it wasn’t written up in the newspaper any differently than an ordinary baseball game.”

Pacquiao and Morales ranks right up there with Devil Rays and Tigers as far as I’m concerned too, but I worry no one else will care either, and Arum will go the way of hockey and just disappear.

I need the guy. He’s our enforcer. When a guest fails to show up for the father/daughter Sunday morning radio gabfest after agreeing to do so, we call on Arum to treat them like Don King and say just the nastiest things about them. So far he’s delivered a public spanking to De La Hoya and Mike Dunleavy, but I worry now that he has become a lightweight it won’t carry the necessary sting if we threaten to sic Arum on them in the future. Arum who?

“I’ve created a business -- promoting as many as 60 fights a year, but what it doesn’t hit is the general population,” Arum said. “The days of Leonard-Hagler mesmerizing the whole country are in the past. I’m using these other events now as building blocks to keep an interest in boxing -- that’s my plan. I can’t get traditional national coverage for boxing any more unless I do something out of the ordinary.”

Thus, the freak shows.

“We’re getting that kind of attention from the Spanish-speaking world for the Chavez fight, and we’ll get that national and international coverage for the women fighting and the chance to see one of them win a $1-million purse,” he said.

You mention purse, and based on personal experience, all the women in my house will tune in to see it.

“The thing about women, when they see a fight, they either hate it, or become the sport’s biggest fans,” he said. “We’re going to market this fight with the women’s TV channels, with Ellen and Oprah. I’m telling you, women are intrigued by this.”

What’s next on your circus agenda -- a fight between “little people?”

“You read my mind,” Arum said. “We’re going to have 108-pounders and 112-pounders fight in the prelims to make the women look bigger.”

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ONE PLAUSIBLE explanation for Arum’s weight loss beyond the declining interest in his sport or his so-called diet, is the fact he sits down for a number of meals with his publicist, Bill Caplan.

By the looks of Caplan, he’s a guy who eats everything in sight, which might explain why Arum’s plate always gets wiped clean.

I mention this because Caplan read about the $1,000 bet for charity with Jerry Buss about whose daughter gets married first, and he wanted to bet too. I happen to know his daughter, Debbie, is already married, so I figured this was just another case of a boxing publicist trying to fix things.

Caplan, however, wanted to bet $1,000 for charity he could lose more weight by the July 30 women’s bout than Page 2. It’s not a fair bet because we’re essentially talking Roseanne and Twiggy here, but I accepted. As long as I’m going to be walking down the aisle with the guy who agrees to play golf with Page 2 in exchange for marrying the daughter, I might as well look good.

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RIGHT NOW bachelors Bill, Donald and Vince are the leaders in the e-mail clubhouse with the chance to join the Page 2 foursome in the Guardians’ Swing Fore the Home Charity Golf Tournament at the Malibu Country Club, and the chance to marry Miss Radio Personality.

The daughter seemed real excited with that news. “I have plans that weekend,” she said. “And if I don’t, I will.”

I’m not surprised. She has spent her life so far playing hard to get, and has been very successful, I might add.

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GEORGE LOPEZ will be the guest on the Sunday morning radio show. Lopez will reveal why he named his book “Why You Crying?” -- telling the audience he’s a Dodger fan.

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IT JUST dawned on me that ever since they began running Tom Lasorda on the scoreboard in Dodger Stadium urging fans to fill out their All-Star ballots and send the best Dodger players to Detroit, the players have tanked. Would you want to go to Detroit when you could stay home on vacation? Would you ever want to go to Detroit?

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T.J. Simers can be reached at

[email protected]. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.