BOB ARUM

NEW YORK (AP) — The most powerful man in boxing is a Harvard-educated tax lawyer and a street-savvy businessman, a Talmudic scholar with a penchant for four-letter expletives.

He's been called generous and charming, ruthless and conniving, yet he's universally respected for spending the better part of five decades atop a pitiless sport.

''Bob Arum is one of the 10 smartest people I've ever met, not one of the 10 smartest boxing people I've met,'' says longtime HBO executive Seth Abraham, who has known Arum as both a businessman and friend. ''He combines, which is extra formidable, traditional book smarts with street smarts, common sense and experience.

''You put those things together and he is truly brilliant.''

The former US Justice Department attorney had seen only a few fights before he promoted one, and never envisioned a lifetime spent just outside the ring. But as he approaches his 78th birthday, having guided the careers of everyone from Muhammad Ali to Oscar De La Hoya, Arum closes in on one more masterful achievement in a professional life full of them.

His Las Vegas-based promotional company, Top Rank, will stage the biggest and most lucrative fight of the year when Manny Pacquiao meets Miguel Cotto on November 14 in Las Vegas.

Both of the charismatic fighters are promoted by Top Rank, part of a stable that includes nearly a dozen world champions. Indeed, while rival promoters like Don King have fallen by the wayside, and upstarts like De La Hoya's Golden Boy Promotions try to claim their piece of the business, Arum is proving once more that he's the best in the game.

''When you get to be my age, you appreciate more the things that mattered to you when you were coming up,'' he says, folding his hands in the cozy dining room of the Friar's Club in Midtown Manhattan, where he spoke to The Associated Press at length about his life and career.

''Right now, this is something that keeps me going, keeps me young.''

The son of an accountant, Arum excelled in school before landing a job at a prestigious Manhattan law firm. He soon went to work in the U.S. attorney's office, where he was ordered to seize the assets of a heavyweight fight between Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson.

The experience made Arum enamored of boxing – or, more specifically, the money in it.

Arum's break came when he was introduced to Muhammad Ali. The idea was that Arum would help promote a fight and then continue on as his lawyer, but they wound up spending more than 20 years together. Ali became a legend and Arum a legend-maker.

''I could tell who was a good person, who was not, who was a selfish person, and who was an OK person, and who was a great person,'' Arum says.