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Joe Markowski thinks Bob Arum should speak for himself as it relates to his controversy-raising remarks on women’s boxing.
Arum, the 90-year-old head of Top Rank Inc., caused a firestorm recently when he claimed that people “don’t particularly pay attention to the women’s fights.” The comments were made in light of the fact that Arum is promoting a lightweight unification bout between Shakur Stevenson and Oscar Valdez on the same night, April 30, as the women’s undisputed lightweight title bout between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano. Arum dug the knife even deeper by putting the onus on ESPN, his exclusive broadcast partner, claiming that the network had no interest in airing women’s boxing.
“The answer is ESPN made the schedule and they couldn’t care less [about women’s boxing],” Arum said in an interview with IFL TV. “I don’t want to denigrate fights, I don’t want to be accused of being anti-women in sports, but I’m telling you, this is like the Premier League against women’s football.”
Markowski, an executive vice president at DAZN, the platform that will broadcast Taylor-Serrano, thinks Arum’s comments were a source of embarrassment for ESPN and will haunt him, and the network, moving forward.
“I would imagine the executives at ESPN winced when they saw that,” Markowski told BoxingScene.com Wednesday afternoon at a press conference in New York City to announce Taylor-Serrano. “As the ‘World Wide Leader in Sports,’ as they market themselves, they are going to be pretty embarrassed that one of their content suppliers is speaking about women’s sport in that way.”
Markowski was also at pains to point out that DAZN has made a concrete investment in women’s boxing, not out of some superficial fealty to notions of political correctness, but because it makes “good business sense.”
“More importantly it’s not the view of DAZN, clearly,” Markowski said. “As a group, before we were DAZN, our original parent company, Perform, landed the biggest ever women’s sport deal with the WTA tennis, a 10-year media distribution deal that’s halfway through right now. DAZN, since our inception since 2016, have always invested and sought out opportunities to invest in women’s sport.
“I think a lot of time we are challenged by that by [people] saying, ‘Oh you’re just doing it for the PR, you’re doing it because it appears to be the right thing to do.’ That’s not the reason we do it. We do it because it makes good business sense. This fight (Taylor-Serrano) is a very good example of that. This fight has more of an opportunity to cut through the mainstream audience full stop than the vast majority of male boxing fights.”
Markowski pointed to the media turnout for the US press conference for Taylor-Serrano, which was held at Madison Square Garden, as evidence of the bout’s broad appeal.
“The fact that the New York Times, Good Morning America are here, the fact that there are mainstream media outlets genuinely intrigued makes me very confident that it will be very valuable to us and will make for a good investment,” Markowski said of Taylor-Serrano. “I am very excited about that.”
Ireland’s Taylor (20-0, 6 KOs), the WBO/WBA/WBC/IBF unified 135-pound champion, will take on seven-division titlist and New York native Serrano (42-1-1, 30 KOs) in a 10-round championship bout. It is the first female bout to headline Madison Square Garden and is being regarded as a historical milestone. Promoting the bout is Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing and Jake Paul, the content creator/boxer, who doubles as Serrano’s chief business partner. Paul, who boasts a significant social media presence, was one of the more vocal critics of Arum’s comments, calling the nonagenarian a “dinosaur” out of step with the times.
Markowski believes, in the end, Arum’s comments will be something of a recurring motif as it relates to the promotion of Taylor-Serrano.
“I will choose to ignore Bob Arum’s comments,” Markowski said. “Actually, they will blow up in his face to a certain extent because it will draw attention that will ultimately result in eyeballs watching this fight. So you can almost thank him on that basis. We’re going to go after him. You saw Jake today, Jake went after him on it, and Jake should. Outdated views should be challenged on a platform as big as Jake’s got, he’s gonna do that.”