‘They have a real problem’: Arum says TKO’s pay scale for boxers will upset UFC fighters
Bob Arum says Dana White will have his hands full once UFC fighters see what TKO is paying its boxers.
Top Rank promoter Bob Arum was in attendance for Mikaela Mayer’s win over Sandy Ryan in their rematch and spent a few minutes talking to Fight Hub about his thoughts on TKO entering boxing, the current status of Vasiliy Lomachenko, and his company’s expiring network deal with ESPN. Check out some excerpts below.
Arum on TKO’s entry into the boxing space
“They have a real problem because their big business is UFC and when the UFC kids see how little they get as against what boxers get, and if it comes from the same company, Dana has his hands full.
“They aren’t exorbitant fight purses but they’re so much more than the UFC people get, and how do you think they’ll feel?”
On his willingness to work with other companies
“We have to take care of our own fighters. We have PBC that we do fights with...we never have any problem working with another company. We have always done a lot of fights with Oscar and his company so I don’t see any problem there.”
On TKO supposedly wanting to ‘take over’ boxing
“That’s what everybody says when they come into boxing, they want to take it over. So, again, I’m an old man and I’ve been here for many, many years and hopefully I’ll be here for some more years and I don’t take those comments seriously.”
On where things stand with Vasiliy Lomachenko
“We’re waiting to get the medical reports and they we’ll let everybody know...It’s not his decision, really, it’s whether he’ll be physically able to perform the way he wishes and the way he wants to, and that’s not something your volition — that’s something the doctor tells you. And he has to see how bad the back is. There’s a lot of issues that have nothing to do with his willingness to fight.”
On if they would target a fight against Tank if Lomachenko does fight again
“I don’t know, let’s first see how the back is. Let’s get the medical report before I start speculating and start calling out other fighters that get excited and then the event doesn’t happen but it’s nobody’s fault.”
On Top Rank’s expiring deal with ESPN and where they’ll go from here
“I think we’ll be stronger than ever, have more events than ever, but I want to say that the eight years that we’ve had with ESPN...[Editor’s note: Arum didn’t finish this thought as he was interrupted by Mikaela Mayer but he was presumably going to say they’ve been great times.]”