If there is ever another remake of The Sunshine Boys, Bob Arum and Don King can play themselves. They are classics, as cantankerous as Walter Matthau and as charming as George Burns.
After a 30-year promotional war followed by an undeclared armistice lasting five years, Arum and King are friends. They argue that they always have been.
“Of course,’’ Arum said Thursday in a conference call.
King did what he often does. He interrupted. Yet, he also agreed with his old rival, calling him a freedom fighter and almost nominating him for a Medal of Honor. For emphasis, King screamed in mock disbelief at a question that suggested there was a time when things between them were less than friendly.
“What are you talking about? … What in the hell you talking about?’’ King bellowed, which is a redundancy for anybody who has listened to him for decades.
Arum was once so exasperated at the redundant bellowing that he ordered a member of his Top Rank staff to unplug King’s microphone midway through “Veeeeeva” and “Puertoooo Reee-coooo” after Puerto Rican Felix Trinidad beat the Arum-promoted Oscar De La Hoya at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay in 1999.
That might have been the only time that Arum subtracted an octave or two from King’s delivery, although King probably didn’t notice. On a noise-meter showdown between a state-of the-art megaphone and King, bet your ear plugs on King every time.
Arum and King, both 79 and going on 80, are co-promoters of the Miguel Cotto-Ricardo Mayorga fight in a March 12 bout that is part of a bigger story involving the renewed partnership of old rivals, an old feud with De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions and new television deal with CBS and subsidiary Showtime.
Unmistakable nostalgia is attached to Arum and King, who represent a different time and a better era for boxing. They are re-introducing themselves to a new generation that knows them as if they were The Rat Pack, pre-Tweet and Before-Facebook. The good old days always look better in the rear-view mirror, probably because the tough times are so easy to forget. Arum and King needed each other to make their fame and fortune. They are forever linked, like Ali and Frazier.
Now, King and Arum are together, like a couple of aging veterans who battled each other from opposite sides of a bitter front in a long-ago war. They survived and now they are comrades. The rivalry defined them, gave them a reason to get up and resume the battle. But there was antagonism. There had to be. Without it, there can be no rivalry.
Both King and Arum mentioned it repeatedly Thursday, as if they missed it.
“Don made me a better promoter,’’ said Arum, who whose off-and-on partnership started with the second Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier rematch 1975, an Ali victory in Manila
Acrimony?
Sure, King said.
If a fight needed some, King said “we gave it a little taste.’’
More of it, in fact, than anything that has fueled Arum’s cold war with De La Hoya, who has replaced King as Arum’s rival and reason to get up for another day of battle. Despite all of the insults Arum throws at De La Hoya, there’s still nothing that rivals the Marvin Hagler-Sugar Ray Leonard fight. That’s when Arum tried to have King thrown out of the ring before Leonard’s victory. They laughed about it Thursday. But nobody was laughing in 1987.
I suspect a lot of the trouble between De La Hoya and Arum is rooted in the inevitable clash between generations. It’s as old as sons rebelling against dads. In turning De La Hoya into the most marketable fighter of his generation, Arum taught him tricks of the trade. De La Hoya and his chief executive, Richard Schaefer, are using them in a bid to turn Saul “Canelo’’ Alvarez into star, a process that continues Saturday night at the Honda Center in Anaheim where a bigger, stronger Alvarez fights Matthew Hatton.
Arum and King dismissed – mocked — De La Hoya Thursday.
“Is he a promoter?’’ Arum said when asked about De La Hoya.
Said King: “I didn’t know who you were talking about.’’
The attack on De La Hoya is more than just generational. It’s business. Arum says he can put together the Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight if King goes to work for Mayweather. He blames the twice-failed negotiations for a fight last year on Mayweather’s Golden Boy representation, although he also has blamed other factors, including Mayweather’s apparent fear of risking his unbeaten record.
King kept open the possibility Thursday that he might represent Mayweather if and when there’s another round of talks for a Pacquiao showdown. Speaking from his home Palm Beach, Fla., King said that Mayweather also was in south Florida. Mayweather has a home in Miami.
“Just so happens Mayweather is here now,’’ King said. “I don’t know if anything is going to happen.’’
For now, an Arum-King remake is a happening, big enough for an old school rivalry and maybe big enough for a fight that could rival one from any era.
