FROM ALI TO PACQUIAO, MURAD MUHAMMAD IN HIS OWN WORDS PT. 5: THE BOBFATHER TRIES TO EXTINGUISH THE FLAME

By Percy Crawford | February 04, 2010

"So I was doing very well and I was doing excellent. I was flying opponents in from around the worldSo I went back to Bob Arum and I said, 'He won't take the deal.' Arum jumped up and threw an ashtray against the wall and broke it. I knew Arum was like that because Herbert Muhammad used to say, 'Bob Arum is like a kid. When things don't go his way, he will break up all of the toys, so nobody could play.' Hold that thought! So when he jumped up and threw that ashtray against the wall, I jumped up and thrust you know I'm a martial artist, so I thrust my fingers towards his eye, but I wasn't going to hit him. I just wanted to let him know he wasn't going to disrespect me," stated promoter Murad Muhammad as he spoke openly about his own dealings with Bob Arum and much more. Don't miss this behind-the-scenes look into the history of the sport as Murad himself tells his story in his own words. From Muhammad Ali to Manny Pacquiao, he has worked alongside some of the biggest names in boxing and you don't want to miss more of his extremely revealing tales. Check it out...

So I was doing very well and I was doing excellent. I was flying opponents in from around the world, Germany and England; anyone that thought they could beat James Scott. And then what happened was I was going to a fight in Atlantic City and there was a gentleman that had a promoter named Russell Peltz. Russell had 2 tickets for me. I saw this kid trying to get in and Russell wouldn't let him in. He didn't have a ticket and so Russell wouldn't let him in. I said, "Russell, this is the world contender." He said, "I don't give a damn." I told him, "You can't treat these fighters like they're a piece of meat. Give him my ticket." So that touched this kid's heart. When it was over, he came over to me and asked if I would take over his career. You know who that kid was? Eddie Gregory "Flame" [Eddie Mustafa Muhammad]. I felt morally obligated because I took the world title from him, so I was moving Eddie Gregory while I was moving Scott and I worked them all the way up back to the number one spot.

So I went to Arum and said, "I got Eddie Gregory and we have to fight Marvin Johnson for the world title." He said, "Okay, I tell you what, I will give Eddie $125,000 to fight for the title. If he wins the fight, I will give him $150,000 for his first title defense. He wins that fight. I will give him $175,000 for his 2nd title defense. If he wins that fight, I will give him $225,000 and if he wins that fight, I will give him $300,000 for his 4th title defense." I said, "Alright, but what about me?" He said, "Well, don't you get a piece of the fighter?" I told him, "I don't ever cut a fighter. I'm not a broker. I'm a promoter." He said, "Alright then, I will pay you $100,000 for your rights. So I went back to Eddie and told him the deal we had. He asked me who was going to promote it. I said, "Arum." Then he said, "If I win, who is going to be my promoter?" I said, "Arum." He said, "I don't want it!" I asked him, "You know how much money you turning down son?" He said, "Nah, if you ain't my promoter, I don't want it." So I went back to Bob Arum and I said, "He won't take the deal." Arum jumped up and threw an ashtray against the wall and broke it. I knew Arum was like that because Herbert Muhammad used to say, "Bob Arum is like a kid. When things don't go his way, he will break up all of the toys, so nobody could play." Hold that thought! So when he jumped up and threw that ashtray against the wall, I jumped up and thrust you know I'm a martial artist, so I thrust my fingers towards his eye, but I wasn't going to hit him. I just wanted to let him know he wasn't going to disrespect me. I said, "Are you God? Are you God?" He sat down very humbly and he said, "No, I'm not God." I said, "Don't you ever tell me what I cannot do. You're not in control. God is in control. We're not going to take your deal, but we are the number one leading available contender and it's a mandatory." He said, "I'm not giving that yellowbelly a shot. He's a coward and he will not get a fight here." So I said, "Okay."

So I called Mendoza the first time I had ever met Mendoza, the President of the WBA. So when I called Mendoza and introduced myself, he said, "Bob Arum don't control the WBA. He can't tell you what you cannot do. You go back and you negotiate with Arum." So I went back and Arum said, "Alright, $25,000!" I said, "That's all?" He said, "That's all! $25,000, take it or leave it and that's all I'm giving him." I went back to Eddie and I told him I appreciated him standing up, but he was only offering $25,000, so if he lost that fight, that's all he got. He said, "But Murad, we ain't losing." I asked him what he wanted me to do and he said, "Take it! Take the $25,000!" I went to Muhammad Ali to ask him if we could use his camp to train Eddie. I went to Slim Robinson, who had just got fired from Mike Rossman, who was the light heavyweight champ. I interviewed Slim in my office and Slim said, "I know the Flame. Eddie is a good fighter." I said, "Yeah and I think he's going to be the next light heavyweight champion of the world." He said, "Alright Muhammad, and where will he be training?" I said, "Muhammad Ali's camp." So we're up in the camp waiting on Slim Robinson and 4:00 passed and then 5:00 and I thought he was going to give up on us. He walks through the door at 6:00. He says, "I'm Slim Robinson! Stand up Eddie, let me tell you why you lost to Scott." And he started showing him different things and then he says, "Now we're fighting a southpaw and this is how you're going to beat him." So I knew we had the man. One day, Slim called me and said we had a problem. I asked what the problem was. He told me Eddie didn't want to run. I said, "What? He's been up there for 3 weeks." He said, "Yeah, but he stopped running." I said, "Go in there and get him up." He said, "Nah, Eddie carries a gun. He will wave that gun. You go in there and tell him to get in there and train." I told him to hold that thought.

Me being a martial artist, I had a Sensei who was one of the baddest on the East Coast. Most Sensei's may have one or two good students in their Dojo. This man had a whole school of students. When you say Black Belts, he had 10 to 15 Black Belts that made the front cover of Karate Magazine. If you say Brown Belt, he had about 10 or 15. If you say Pee Wee, he had the most outstanding two pee wee's in New York. He had females and everything. You would need a building just to hold his trophies, he had so many. He was a great martial artist and his name was Kareem Abdullah. So I called Kareem and told him I needed him to train Eddie. He said, "I'm not a boxing trainer." I said, "No, I want you to train him on the road, get him up to run and out the life in him." He goes, "What are you going to pay me?" I told him and he said, "Done deal." He went up there and he was working with Eddie. He didn't care. He would kick the door in and Eddie could have grabbed anything he wanted, but he was going to have to shoot him because Kareem ain't stopping. So Slim Robinson called me and said, "Hey, it's working; Eddie's running every day." Kareem had him running and he was running with him. So Kareem called me one day and said, "We got a problem." I said, 'What problem we got now?" He said, "Well, he won't run that mountain." See, Ali got a steep mountain and Eddie would run the road, but he would not run that mountain. So I talked to him and I told him he had to make it up to the top. I asked him what the problem was. He said, "I can't get him to run that mountain." I asked, "What are we going to do?" He told me to give him some time. So he called me back and told me that he ran half the mountain, so I was happy; that was good. So I said, "That's good, we got him." He said, "Yeah, but he didn't get to the top yet." So a week went by and he called me back and said Eddie had gone 2/3 of the mountain. He promised he would get him there though. And then he finally called me and said, "Guess what? He made the mountain." I said, "He made the mountain? How did you get him to do it?" He said, "I told him it was Freedom Road on top of that mountain and if he didn't get to the top, he wouldn't be free."

So now we fly into Indianapolis and I'm afraid that someone's gonna put stuff in his food because this is big time now. I thought someone was going to put something on his hand that would get into his eye, so I hired Ali's cook. I hired Booker to cook all of his food. They gave us 3 rooms in their hotel, but we took him about 3 miles away from the hotel. They offered us where we would feed him, clothe him and do everything and our training there. We would come to the hotel like we lived there, but we didn't. We had to starve him to death because it was hard for him to make weight. We finally made the weight and the fight was on.

BE SURE TO CHECK BACK FOR PART 6 AS MUHAMMAD REVEALS MUCH MORE ABOUT HIS YEARS AS A PROMOTER

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