Bob Arum is back at it again. The delusional Top Rank owner never seems to pass on an opportunity to bad mouth the most talented fighter in his stable. Most recently stating that; “With Rigondeaux, I have a problem. You can’t really blame the network. The rating for the Kirkland – Tapia fight was almost double Rigondeaux’s rating. People walked out of the arena. If people don’t want to watch, what do you expect a network to do? I don’t care how good we say he is, which he is.”
The important thing to note is the fact that HBO and Top Rank scheduled the fight on the same night as a stacked quadruple header on Showtime. Then they wonder why the ratings suffered. They also held the fight in Atlantic City, instead of Miami where Rigondeaux would have many supporters. These are not coincidences or mistakes. They are HBO and Bob Arum’s way of undermining possibly the most talented fighter on the planet. Neither the network nor Arum seem to have gotten over the beating that Rigondeaux gave their prized Filipino attraction Nonito Donaire.
Arum went on to criticize Rigondeaux’s tactics against Joseph Agbeko. Stating; “They promised me before the fight, and it started out that way. But once he hit Agbeko a couple of times, that’s it. I won the fight. And nothing Fucking happened for the next nine rounds. It’s very sad, because he’s so good. Maybe if, down the road, I get Lomachenko to fight him, that would be interesting. But I don’t know. Lomachenko will go in and beat the crap out of him. That’s a really interesting fight.”
This is one of the more ridiculous statements boxing fans will ever get the chance to read. When Donaire put on a boring performance against Omar Navarez, did HBO and Bob Arum blame Donaire? No, they blamed Navarez for being timid, and rightfully so. Did they blame Mikey Garcia for putting on a snooze fest against Juan Carlos Burgos this weekend? No, they blamed Burgos for boxing timidly. HBO also has no issue paying big money for Andre Ward’s fights, even though he has a lower knockout percentage and fights in a very defensive minded fashion.
What seems most unbelievable to many boxing fans; even though Donaire spent the majority of the fight against Rigondeaux backing up, it is Rigondeuax who is blamed for the fight being “boring”, when it was anything but. If Arum is so disgusted by the way Rigondeaux fights, he could always let him out of his contract. I’m sure Rigondeaux would be welcomed by Showtime and Goldenboy.
Max Kellerman, Jim Lampley and Bob Arum don’t seem to have the attention span to appreciate any fight which is fought at a high skill level. I believe they should consider dropping boxing all together, and just air live executions… maybe that would be enough to keep them interested.
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