It takes a lot to shock Hall of Fame promoter Bob Arum, as one would expect with a man who is in his eighties and has been around boxing for decades. But the Top Rank boss could not hide his shock over yesterday’s big announcement regarding Gennady Golovkin’s upcoming fight with Kell Brook. Speaking with RingTV.com, Arum called the fight, “F-ckin crazy!”
“Golovkin is fighting who?” Arum said to Ring. “I don’t believe that. That’s crazy. I mean, Golovkin is fighting a welterweight? You hear something crazy every day. I’m not surprised, I’m a little shocked. Is that even a fight? That is absolutely f-ckin crazy.”
Arum of course promotes WBO welterweight champ Jessie Vargas, who was supposed to fight Brook in a welterweight unification clash later this summer. That fight now gone, Arum could understandably be annoyed at the way his fighter has lost out. Maybe this factor has added to Arum’s disbelief in GGG facing Brook, the IBF 147-pound champ (although the promoter did say to Ring that he has no real problem with Vargas not getting the Brook fight.) Arum said he would have preferred, or at least understood more fully, a GGG-Chris Eubank Junior fight; as was the initial prognosis for the middleweight king’s next fight.
There are certain to be other critics who slate the September 10th fight set for London, but is it really such a bad fight (is it even a fight at all, Arum went as far as asking!)? Two unbeaten fighters, both of whom are ranked in the Ring Magazine top-10 pound-for-pound charts, taking each other on – why the outcry? We’ve seen welterweights go up to middleweight in the pursuit of greatness before and we undoubtedly will do again. And it must be stressed how big a welterweight Brook is (or was). Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t see a gross mismatch here.
Anyway, what next for Vargas now that he will not be heading over to England? Arum said to the website of The Bible of Boxing how we should “stand by,” adding how “there will be a big announcement next week.”
Just who will the once-beaten Vargas face instead of Brook? A good bet would be Tim Bradley, in a rematch of their fight last summer. Vargas even Tweeted the possibility or, to be more accurate, his desire for this rematch, when things began to look less and less encouraging with the suddenly stalled Brook clash. This fight would definitely sell, what with the controversy that came in the final round of their first fight; with Bradley hurt bad in the fading seconds of the 12th round, only for the ref to make a blunder and signal the fight had reached its end when in fact he had heard the ten-second warning clacker and not the final bell.
Or maybe Arum has something else up his sleeve for Vargas. Let’s hope that big announcement comes as promised.