Top Rank boxing promoter: I don’t demean Dana White
Bob Arum’s step son Todd duBoef is the president of Top Rank Boxing, promoting Manny Pacquaio vs “Sugar” Shane Mosley…
Bob Arum’s step son Todd duBoef is the president of Top Rank Boxing, promoting Manny Pacquaio vs “Sugar” Shane Mosley on Saturday. He is recognized throughout the boxing industry as energetic, hard-working, and smart. He understands the economics of the sweet science and its interaction with the new media as well as anyone. Over the next decade, he might be the most important person in boxing. Not the most powerful, but the most important. If he isn’t already.
And he thinks boxing and MMA are not in competition.
“I did 50,000-plus people twice with Manny Pacquaio last year, but I don’t have to go out there and say, ‘How does that make you feel, Dana? And that’s just me. It doesn’t include the Klitschko brothers, who each did 45,000-plus twice last year in Europe. It’s nonsense playing that game. I don’t go and say, ‘MMA doesn’t exist. Their largest gate in Nevada is $5.5 million. They’re not even in the top 35.’ I don’t do that. That’s demeaning somebody’s product or competing with somebody’s product. I’m not into that.
“I think it’s wonderful that consumers have an appetite for the product and they flock to a GSP event or a Lesnar event or an Anderson Silva event. And if it’s Pacquaio or Floyd Mayweather or the Klitschkos, there shouldn’t be some barometer of success for the products based on immediate results. If there are fans, God bless them. That’s wonderful. Why would I be frustrated? I’m encouraged. That’s great. That means the UFC is doing a great job.”
“There is no competition. Why create a competition when there is none? With my market and what I want to do, I believe there are opportunities for both of us in the fight category. I don’t believe there are opportunities for us to throw mud at each other. That doesn’t make any sense. That doesn’t appeal to me. What appeals to me is that people are engaged in the fight category. How does that help with my market?
“It’s the same thing the UFC should be looking at. People are engaged in boxing. How can that help the UFC? In Mexico, boxing ratings are over the top on terrestrial television – superior even to soccer. ‘How do we garner some support for the UFC?’ That should be their rationale – not to say, ‘I want to replace it and kill it and bury it.’ That doesn’t make sense.”
“There are perspectives that are rather jaded in the marketplace as it relates to boxing. My goal is to try and change that rhetoric and try to combat the traditional embedded views that boxing is this or boxing is that or MMA is too gross. I don’t go with that.
“I think you’ve got to expose as big of an audience as possible to your product. If they like it, they like it. If they don’t, they don’t. But I think both sports are going to be very successful, and I think they’re both going to be around for a long time.”