Friday, January 09, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

FBI raids boxing promoter's office

Report: Officials think fight was fixed

Shane Mosley, left, lands a punch against Oscar De La Hoya in their September bout at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. REVIEW-JOURNAL FILE PHOTO

FBI agents from the Organized Crime squad seized computers, boxing contracts, medical records and financial documents from boxing promoter Top Rank on Tuesday.

A spokesman declined to say what the agents were seeking, but the New York Daily News reported in today's editions that investigators think the Sept. 13 fight at the MGM Grand between Oscar De La Hoya and Shane Mosley was fixed.

Mosley upset De La Hoya for the super welterweight title in a controversial decision, prompting Top Rank President Bob Arum to allege improprieties in the selection of the judges. Arum, who promotes De La Hoya, later apologized and said he spoke in the heat of the moment. He admitted he had no evidence to back his claims.

Jim Stern, a spokesman at the Las Vegas office of the FBI, confirmed the raid was carried out as part of an investigation with the New York Police Department but would not say what agents were seeking. More than 12 agents conducted the search at the Top Rank offices at 3980 Howard Hughes Parkway.

A public information officer with the New York police said officials with knowledge of the case would be unavailable until today.

Top Rank attorney Richard Wright said the warrant the FBI presented was sealed and said he cannot determine the nature of the investigation. But the Daily News quoted an anonymous law enforcement source as saying, "We have information that the De La Hoya fight was fixed."

Arum, 72, a former attorney in the Justice Department, was returning Thursday to Las Vegas from a vacation in South Africa and could not be reached for comment. Neither De La Hoya nor Mosley could be reached, but Mosley's promoter and De La Hoya's business manager dismissed claims the bout was fixed.

Richard Schaefer, the business manager, said De La Hoya earned more than $20 million for the fight with Mosley.

"I find it hard to believe that Top Rank would fix a fight against Oscar, who has been worth so much money to it for a long time," Schaefer said. "Why would Top Rank do that? It doesn't make sense. If Oscar had won that fight, we probably would have immediately made a third fight to settle the score once and for all, and that would have been huge in terms of the amount of money.

"If we had won and scheduled a third fight, we probably would have gotten Mosley for less money. It doesn't make any sense that Top Rank would have fixed it, and certainly not that Oscar would have had anything to do with that."

Mosley promoter Gary Shaw agreed. Arum was railing against the decision, not the actions of a man who had just fixed a fight, Shaw said.

"Something has got to be wrong in that story because I can't imagine Bob Arum fixing a fight against De La Hoya," Shaw said. "It's preposterous, or at least it appears preposterous. Bob was the one crying fix or foul after the fight.

"Going out and yelling like he did after he just fixed a fight would be like robbing a bank and then standing in the lobby yelling, `Robbery.' It doesn't make sense, and I just know that there is not enough money in the whole world to get two proud champions like `Sugar' Shane Mosley and Oscar De La Hoya to fix a fight."

Marc Ratner, the executive director of the Nevada Athletic Commission, disputed that the fight was fixed.

"It was a close fight, and it was one of those fights that could have gone either way," Ratner said. "It was really a hard fight to score. As I watched it go round by round, I felt it was a close fight, and I knew we had good judges. I saw nothing inappropriate, and I absolutely don't believe that fight was fixed."

Also, he said he knew of no instances in Nevada in which the scales were tampered with to allow fighters from different weight classes to fight each other, another allegation against Top Rank made in the Daily News story.

Ratner said the scales are calibrated the morning of a weigh-in, and no one has access to the scales until the weigh-in.

"And I also don't believe there was a problem with the scales. I can't think of one instance (here) in which I wondered. That's never been a problem in my mind."

Top Rank spokesman Lee Samuels said all of the seized computers have been returned already.

The warrant sought Top Rank's records from 2001 to the present. Top Rank promoted two shows in New York in that span, and they occurred on back-to-back days. It promoted an HBO card featuring Julio Diaz in New York on April 28, 2001, and followed the bout with an IBF minimum-weight title fight the next day in Jamaica Queens, N.Y.