What Would Top Rank Look Like if Bob Arum Hadn’t Survived Plane Crash?

Everyone is familiar with the saying that the only things certain are death and taxes. But there are loopholes in tax codes, allowing those who are smart enough or well-connected enough to escape paying their fair share to the government or, sometimes, anything at all.  That leaves death as the one absolute, inescapable fact of life.

We all die whenever God, fate or random circumstance determine that our time on Earth is over. But the Grim Reaper often shows up unexpectedly, snatching lives not fully lived before the about-to-be-dearly-departed have an opportunity to prepare themselves, their loved ones and their legacies for the decedents’ passage into the great unknown. It is that uncertainty that results in some of the most speculative questions ever posed to the public at large. What might have happened if President Abraham Lincoln decided not to attend Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1965, to see a performance of the play “Our American Cousin”? Or nearly a century later had another U.S. President, John F. Kennedy, not shown up in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963?

Top Rank founder and CEO Bob Arum, arguably the most successful boxing promoter ever, is still going strong at the ripe old age of 86. Unlike his longtime arch-rival, Don King, whose once-powerful company has vastly diminished in influence and appears to not have a viable succession plan, Arum (pictured with his stepson Todd duBoef and Shakur Stevenson) continues to look to the future while positioning Top Rank as a dominant force beyond his own still-undetermined life span.  As if there were any doubt as to that, Top Rank announced on Aug. 2 that it had replaced its existing four-year contract with ESPN with a new, seven-year deal that both parties are calling “the most comprehensive, exclusive rights agreement in the history of boxing.”

It is another significant building block in the legend of a master wheeler-dealer, a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School who had never even seen a boxing match before the first fight card he promoted, on March 29, 1966, in which Muhammad Ali defended his world heavyweight championship with a 15-round unanimous decision over gritty but outclassed Canadian George Chuvalo in Toronto. Arum would go on to promote 27 bouts involving Ali, and among the other ring notables that performed in megafights staged by Top Rank are Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, Roberto Duran, George Foreman, Oscar De La Hoya, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Manny Pacquiao and, more recently, Vasiliy Lomachenko and Terence Crawford, regarded by many knowledgeable boxing people as the two best pound-for-pound fighters in the world today.

But what would Top Rank – indeed, the entire boxing industry – look like today had Arum perished along with six others in a fiery crash of a private plane in Big Bear Lake, Calif., on Aug. 13, 2002? Might some of the company’s proudest accomplishments in the 16 years that have followed Arum’s near-brush with death still occurred? Would those suddenly charged with the responsibility of implementing his vision of what was to be carry on as if he were still there and calling the shots?

I would have liked to hear what Arum had to say about the phalanx of what-ifs he surely must have contemplated then, and maybe even now. When faced with the possibility of sudden death, did the events of his life flash through his mind as some in similar situations have stated? Did he fret as to whether his stepson and appointed successor, Todd duBoef, then only 33, had learned enough intricacies of the boxing business to smoothly transition into the company’s foremost position? But my request for Arum to discuss those and other matters, passed along to him by TR publicist Evan Korn, was rejected because, as Korn said, “Bob has said enough about that. He wants to look ahead, not back.”

Fair enough. But Kevin Iole, then with the Las Vegas Review-Journal and now the combat sport writer for Yahoo!Sports, was one of the passengers in the plane that harrowing afternoon, and in addition to his own sense of relief that he survived, he also has considered the ramifications of a boxing landscape prematurely bereft of  one of its foremost innovators.

“No doubt,” Iole told me when asked if the fight game as presently constituted would have veered onto another course had Arum died that day. “You’re talking about one of the great promoters of all time, arguably the best ever. If he died then, you have to believe Top Rank would have looked very different, and maybe well into the future.”

Truth be told, all aboard the short, 100-mile flight that day – along with Arum and Iole, the list includes Review-Journal writer Royce Feour, Mandalay Bay executives Scott Voeller and H.C. Rowe, pilot Joseph Topham and co-pilot Craig Terry — are extremely fortunate to be around to tell the tale, or not, of what might have been the final day of their existence.

The purpose of the flight was for Arum, the writers and the Mandalay Bay officials to be on hand for a media gathering hosted by Oscar De La Hoya to hype his Sept. 14, 2002, bout with Fernando Vargas. It was the type of publicity-driven event almost everyone in boxing has attended many times without ever giving the possibility of death a second thought. This time was different, however.

“I did not realize we were crashing, believe it or not,” Iole said. “We had a series of bumps as we were going down, which stopped a little bit, and then a bigger bump because we had crashed through a fence at the end of the runway and crossed the road. There was a truck coming and the nose of the plane actually went underneath it. When we stopped we were in a dry lakebed.

“Royce’s seatbelt was loose, which we knew when we took off, so he was kind of getting thrown back and forth. His head was on my lap and he was just sort of lying there. Before I could even process that, Scott Voeller, who was sitting on the opposite side of the plane from me, one row behind Royce, shouted, `Get off the plane! The wings are on fire!’

“The co-pilot (Terry) tried to open the door with his shoulder. It didn’t work because the door had been knocked out of shape by the crash and was stuck. He tried again, still no go. Then he held onto a railing and sort of drop-kicked the door open. Honestly, I didn’t worry that we might not be able to get off the plane. I didn’t even contemplate that. But after we got off, and started counting people, some of the airport people were showing up and yelling, `Get away from the plane! It’s loaded with fuel!’ It wasn’t until we had moved away maybe 200 feet – really, not that far – when the plane blew up. That’s when I realized, `Holy s—, we all could have been killed.’”

Arum has spoken about the incident, at least for a story authored by Iole on its 10-year anniversary. “We ran away,” he was quoted as saying, “and I think we could have beaten (Olympic sprint champion Usain) Bolt that day.”

Stan Wainhamer of the San Bernadino County Sheriff’s Department gave his take on just how close a call those in the plane had had. “The plane was a ball of fire when it went through that fence,” he said. “They say any time you walk away from a plane crash, you’re lucky. But figure that plane bounced off the runway, that it was on fire when it crossed the road, that it screeched to a stop in the field, and then you look at what’s left of it and you have to say it is miraculous that everyone survived.”

The good fortune that preserved the lives of Arum and the other six individuals – who showed their pluck by getting aboard another private plane later that day for the return flight to Vegas – is underscored by the list of those who were involved in other crashes and did not walk away. Former heavyweight champ Rocky Marciano died in the wreck of a private plane on Aug. 31, 1969; former middleweight titlist Marcel Cerdan, en route to New York to gear up for a rematch with the man who dethroned him, Jake LaMotta, never made it there when his plane went down in the Azores on Oct. 27, 1949; all 14 members of a U.S. amateur boxing team perished in a crash in Warsaw, Poland, on March 14, 1980, and three key executives of the Trump organization (Mark Etess, Stephen Hyde and Jonathan Benanav and two crew members) were killed in a helicopter crash on Oct. 10, 1989, as they were en route from New York City to Atlantic City for a press conference to announce the Feb. 3, 1990, bout between junior welterweights Vinny Pazienza and Hector Camacho at Trump Plaza.

Bernie Dillon, then an executive with the Trump organization, now vice president of entertainment at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City, can appreciate the terrible impact Arum’s premature death might have had on Top Rank because he saw what happened to Donald Trump’s boxing operation when that helicopter plummeted to earth.

“I think that boxing in Atlantic City would have been in a much better state for much longer than it was, as things turned out,” Dillon said. “Those talented individuals would have been a part of bringing some of the bigger fights (to Atlantic City), but there’s no way that any one company or group of people could have reversed for long a trend that already had begun. The sport back then was not nearly what it had been, or is now.”

Death and boxing are as linked as death and just about anything else. Good times ebb and flow, as do the bad times. And human existence, as always, is a tenuous proposition and just a part of the equation.

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