Could Florida be the state in which boxing makes its comeback?
Promoter Bob Arum told ESPN that he’s looking into the possibility of staging boxing cards there after Gov. Ron DeSantis described World Wrestling Entertainment in a memo as essential business in Florida during the coronavirus pandemic.
WWE officials reportedly are considering their training facility in Orlando and the private Full Sail University in Winter Park as possible sites for events.
Arum said DeSantis’ announcement could open the door to combat sports events. He added that he planned to reach out to WWE officials.
“It’s very, very interesting, and we’re going to be in touch with them. There’s a possibility to use their facility to maybe do events without a crowd,” Arum said Tuesday.
He went on: “We’re very close with Vince [McMahon] and the WWE. So let’s see, but we’re still not talking before June.”
Arum told ESPN that there is a strong possibility that events will be held without live audiences, at least as the sport begins to rebuild. And he suggested that big events will have to wait until it’s safe to have spectators.
“But it all depends, the whole reopening of the country, the different states, it all comes down to the same thing — testing, adequate testing,” he said. “You cannot open it and have athletes compete against each other with referees, the judges, with camera people, unless you can ensure that it’s safe. And the only way you can ensure that it’s safe is with testing. It comes down to testing.”
And as for the big events: “Those are either going to have to wait until you have spectators, or if the fighters get antsy, they will have to deal with an adjustment in their purses because you will have cut off an important revenue source from the event.
“For example, [Tyson] Fury and [Deontay] Wilder, the gate was close to $17 million. And that’s from the public buying tickets to the fight. How do you replace that? Well, if you don’t replace it, then somebody has to eat that.”
The third Fury-Wilder fight has been pushed back to the fall.
“I’m very optimistic that we’ll be doing events for audiences in the last three months of the year,” Arum said. “Do I know for sure? No. But that’s in my mind how I’m calculating it.”