Top Rank promoter Bob Arum took some time to share his thoughts on all the fallout behind Triller’s failed plans to stage a lightweight title fight between Teofimo Lopez and George Kambosos. Arum says all of the postponements only for Triller to eventually pull the plug on promoting the fight hasn’t been good for the sport. Instead he says he’ll pitch to organizations the idea of not letting just any company participate in purse bids going forward.
“It is really a disservice to boxing,” Arum said. “I mean, Teofimo and Kambosos saw all of this money and they were happy when the purse bid came in. But you have a company in Triller that didn’t know anything about promoting boxing and they were sort of, I think, a fly-by-night outfit and I am going to lobby all of these organizations to only allow the promoters in a purse bid are promoters who have done at least one championship fight in that organization, so at least they have some basis for what to do and what the rules are and so forth.
“And that’s not to cut down bidding. I mean, a lot of companies have done at least one fight and they can bid. But if they just come out of nowhere, put a couple of dollars down, say they’re promoters, and then put in a bid — you get what you got with this whole thing with Lopez and Kambosos.”
It’s an interesting idea from Arum, I’d say, but there’s a bit of a catch-22 in the premise being that a new company could never promote their first championship fight if having to had promoted a championship fight in the past (in order to bid on one) is a prerequisite. Seems anti-competitive to me. Anyway, we’ll see if his lobbying even goes anywhere, but color me skeptical.