Arum

You should consider yourself lucky if you remember more of Muhammad Ali than the Ali of the past 10 years or so. You're even luckier if you get to hear somebody who knew that other Ali from way back then. Reports like the one that came out yesterday, from Ali's daughter Laila, remind us of this. Laila, 27 and a boxing champ herself, told the Los Angeles Times that the Parkinson's symptoms with which he has long battled seem to be affecting him worse. "I feel like the disease is progressing," she said of her 63-year-old father.

Think of boxing's quest for fame and fortune as a game of musical chairs. Recently, the song stopped and Tim Bradley quickly sat down. The 28-year-old fire hydrant, a 140-pounder from Palm Springs, Calif., with lightning-quick hands and feet, signed with Top Rank Promotions. That's Bob Arum's company, and 46 years after he quit being a Harvard lawyer and found Muhammad Ali, Arum's is still the logo you want on your boxing gloves. Bradley had been with Gary Shaw's promotions, but when his contract ran out this summer, Bradley ran out too. Right to Arum.

It does not take long for promoter Bob Arum to start spewing superlatives when he is hyping his latest boxing wunderkind.In this case, Arum is giving the hard sell to Roy Jones, a flamboyant, young middleweight who battles Percy Harris of Baltimore for the World Boxing Council Intercontinental title at the Taj Mahal tomorrow."

Halfway through his meal of grilled goat meat and lemon-scented tomato chunks, Dishon Kimani, 31, leaped out of his seat and pumped his fists in the air. "Oh my God! He took Ohio!" he announced as CNN declared the state for Barack Obama. "This thing is over." Kimani, a tow truck operator from Baltimore, was among about 20 African natives huddled around a flat-screen television at a lounge above George's Auto Repair in Northeast Baltimore. They chatted in a rowdy mix of Swahili, English and Kenyan slang as the election results trickled in. Every few minutes, as if on cue, the crowd would go silent as a winner was declared in a state, erupting in cheers and whistles moments later.

Boxing promoter Bob Arum said yesterday that he avoided a purse bid for Hasim Rahman's upcoming World Boxing Council title bout with James Toney, instead reaching a deal with rival Don King that allows Arum to control the promotion of a title defense likely to take place in Atlantic City, N.J., or Baltimore. Arum said the 33-year-old Rahman (41-5-1, 33 knockouts) could meet Toney (69-4-2, 43 KOs) on March 18. Toney, 37, also is promoted by Dan Goosen. "We offered Toney's people [King and Goosen]

A HEAVYWEIGHT title fight between Evander Holyfield and George Foreman is in the works -- if Holyfield dethrones undisputed champion Buster Douglas on Oct. 25 and Foreman continues to knock over an almost monthly procession of second-rate opponents.According to promoter Bob Arum, "an agreement in principle" for such a fight has been reached, as long as the two heavyweights keep up their ends of the bargain."We haven't signed anything yet, but we've agreed to the terms," Arum said. "Of course, it's not done until it's done."

Baltimore native Hasim Rahman's sometimes turbulent boxing career may be on the rise even as there are still those who question his ability to sustain its upward momentum. But fight promoter Bob Arum, chief executive officer of Top Rank, is not among the doubters. In fact, Arum acts as if he can turn the 33-year-old two-time World Boxing Council champion into the sport's greatest heavyweight attraction since Muhammad Ali. "I'm not a neophyte in this business. Tomorrow will mark the 40th year that I've been in boxing promotion, so I know, based on experience, who is promotable and who isn't promotable," Arum, 74, said during a March 7 conference call.

Promoter Bob Arum, claiming "improprieties" in the selection of two of the three judges in Saturday night's Oscar De La Hoya-Shane Mosley 154-pound title fight, will file a protest with the Nevada State Athletic Commission within a week. Arum maintains that the two judges - Stanley Christodoulou of South Africa, representing the World Boxing Association, and Anek Hongthongkam of Thailand, representing the World Boxing Council - were picked by the Nevada commission without the approval of their respective sanctioning organizations.

Bob Arum of Top Rank Promotions, a surprise, late entry into the negotiations, out-bid archrival Don King yesterday for the right to stage the World Boxing Council heavyweight title bout between champion Vitali Klitschko and Baltimore native Hasim Rahman. The fight will be held in Las Vegas, "probably in November," Arum said. Top Rank president Todd duBoef acted on behalf of Arum, who is vacationing in Paris. DuBoef bid $12.1 million to King's $11 million. Klitschko's company, K2, bid $10.7 million, compared to $6.7 million for little-known Bob Hitz, duBoef said.

WASHINGTON -- The site and date of heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield's April title defense against George Foreman should be determined today when promoters meet with Donald Trump.Trump, who bid $11 million to stage the fight in Atlantic City, N.J., will meet in New York with co-promoter Dan Duva and Holyfield's manager, Shelly Finkel. Trump, scheduled to make a payment of $2.5 million, has invoked a war clause in the contract, and is attempting to renegotiate a lower fee.But Duva and co-promoter Bob Arum, have objected, and may shift the bout to Las Vegas, where it would be held about a week later that the April 19 Atlantic City date.

Baltimore native Hasim Rahman will not retire after losing his World Boxing Council heavyweight title to Oleg Maskaev on Saturday and instead will "take the rest of the year off" before taking a fight as early as "late February or the beginning of March," promoter Bob Arum said. Neither Rahman, who will turn 34 in November, nor his brother and co-manager, Yah Yah Cason, could be reached to comment. But Arum said he and Cason came up with a plan during an hour-long meeting on Monday. Co-manager Steve Nelson confirmed the meeting.

LAS VEGAS -- The handlers of Oleg Maskaev clearly took offense at the silly promotional line that appears on fight posters, Web sites and television commercials - "America's Last Line of Defense." The idea behind the slogan is simple: Hasim Rahman is the only thing standing in the way of foreigners owning all four major heavyweight belts, an idea that would've seemed blasphemous not long ago. Maskaev's people walked around the Wynn Hotel and Casino wearing T-shirts that show their Kazakhstan-born fighter standing in front of an American flag.

Baltimore native Hasim Rahman will defend his World Boxing Council heavyweight title against Oleg Maskaev, a native of Kazakhstan, on Aug. 12 in Las Vegas most likely at the Thomas & Mack Center, his promoter, Bob Arum, said last night. The bout between the 33-year-old Rahman (41-5-2, 33 knockouts), who is 6-0-1 with four knockouts in his past seven fights, and the 37-year-old Maskaev (32-5, 25 KOs), who has won 10 straight bouts - eight of them by knockout - is a rematch of a November 1999 bout in Atlantic City, N.J., won by Maskaev, a Staten Island resident, by eighth-round knockout.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- Hasim Rahman had written it before in pencil, and last night he'd hoped to trace over it ink. I am the champion, not some one-hit wonder. Last night's fight against James Toney was to be the one that defined Rahman, that silenced critics and catapulted the Baltimore native into territory that no heavyweight has chartered since Lennox Lewis held the crown. You don't have to be a Rahman fan to realize the sport of boxing and the entire heavyweight division needed this as well.

Baltimore native Hasim Rahman's sometimes turbulent boxing career may be on the rise even as there are still those who question his ability to sustain its upward momentum. But fight promoter Bob Arum, chief executive officer of Top Rank, is not among the doubters. In fact, Arum acts as if he can turn the 33-year-old two-time World Boxing Council champion into the sport's greatest heavyweight attraction since Muhammad Ali. "I'm not a neophyte in this business. Tomorrow will mark the 40th year that I've been in boxing promotion, so I know, based on experience, who is promotable and who isn't promotable," Arum, 74, said during a March 7 conference call.

Boxing promoter Bob Arum said yesterday that he avoided a purse bid for Hasim Rahman's upcoming World Boxing Council title bout with James Toney, instead reaching a deal with rival Don King that allows Arum to control the promotion of a title defense likely to take place in Atlantic City, N.J., or Baltimore. Arum said the 33-year-old Rahman (41-5-1, 33 knockouts) could meet Toney (69-4-2, 43 KOs) on March 18. Toney, 37, also is promoted by Dan Goosen. "We offered Toney's people [King and Goosen]

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- Co-promoters Bob Arum and Dan Duva were predicting record pay-per-view income from last night's fight based on early sales at $40 a household. Income from the venture could climb past $50 million.The fight last night was the first boxing venture produced by the new TVKO network, a subsidiary of the Time-Warner conglomerate.Ross Levinsohn, TVKO's director of marketing, said: "We're running 10 to 25 percent ahead of any other fight ever shown on pay-per-view. "We have 18 million addressable homes, and . . . would set a record" if 1.3 million bought the service.

NEW YORK -- Evander Holyfield gave George Foreman something to chew on yesterday, saying he "would love to see George retire.""George won over everyone," the heavyweight champion said yesterday. "He got a moral victory. Why go through the strain of trying to get there again? Your last impression on the people was that fight. It should end there."Agreeing with Holyfield was Foreman's promoter, Bob Arum, who said the 42-year-old challenger had asked him to "explore what's out there for him, fighting or not fighting."

Judge Bruce A. Markell of the Las Vegas District Court yesterday rejected a contract by promoter Don King and validated one by Bob Arum with World Boxing Council champion Hasim Rahman, in a decision the fighter's promoter, Steve Nelson, called "a total victory." The move allows Rahman to "maximize Rock's potential financially in the ring," Nelson said. "The judge recognized that we have always had problems with Don King and now we can move forward under Bob Arum, whom we believe will help us to do that."

You should consider yourself lucky if you remember more of Muhammad Ali than the Ali of the past 10 years or so. You're even luckier if you get to hear somebody who knew that other Ali from way back then. Reports like the one that came out yesterday, from Ali's daughter Laila, remind us of this. Laila, 27 and a boxing champ herself, told the Los Angeles Times that the Parkinson's symptoms with which he has long battled seem to be affecting him worse. "I feel like the disease is progressing," she said of her 63-year-old father.