NEW YORK --- 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 Justice Department attorney had seen only a few fights before he promoted one, and certainly 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 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 Saturday in Las Vegas.

Both of the charismatic fighters are promoted by Top Rank, part of a stable that includes middleweight king Kelly Pavlik and lightweight champ Edwin Valero -- all told, 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.

His son-in-law, Todd duBoef, is beginning to take over Arum's boxing empire, but that doesn't mean the promoter is slowing down.

"Right now," Arum says, "this is something that keeps me going, keeps me young."

The son of an accountant, Arum grew up in Brooklyn and excelled at Harvard Law School. He landed a job at a prestigious Manhattan law firm upon graduation and eventually went to work in the U.S. attorney's office under Robert F. Kennedy.

In 1964, Arum was ordered to seize the assets of a fight between Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson. The experience made Arum enamored of boxing -- or, more specifically, the money in it.

He didn't truly become a player in the sport, though, until meeting Jim Brown.

The Cleveland Browns running back had a direct line to Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, and thus to Muhammad Ali, who had recently converted. Arum was introduced, and soon a devout Jew was promoting the most bankable star in boxing.

"When Brown asked me to become Ali's lawyer and promoter, my idea was that I would promote one fight and then we'd find someone else and I'd continue as his lawyer," Arum says, shaking his head. "I had no intention of being a promoter."

They'd been banished from just about every city in the United States, finally ending up in Toronto, and Arum says he kept promoting Ali because he was so angry with how the heavyweight had been treated.

The two men wound up traveling the world, spending more than 20 years together. Ali became a legend and Arum a legend-maker.

"Because I was so up close and so involved with all these fighters, 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. "And Ali was a great person. I'm talking about what was in his heart of hearts -- what was he deep down, what was he made of. He was made of pure gold."

Arum's mastery of closed-circuit television, the precursor to pay-per-view, and his knowledge of cable gave him a platform on which to showcase their talent. From 1980-95, Top Rank oversaw the longest-running weekly boxing series in TV history on ESPN, and agreements with Spanish language channels Telemundo and Azteca helped grow the Hispanic market.

"I have always felt that Bob is unmatched in the business of boxing," says Rich Rose, who was in charge of sports at Caesar's Palace during the 1980s. "He may not be the most flamboyant guy, but he gets it, and he's not afraid to do something that's a little off the chart to make it work."

On a breezy day in early September, Arum stood outside the home dugout at Yankee Stadium for a news conference to officially announce the Pacquiao-Cotto fight.

It had been more than three decades since Arum promoted the last bout at the old ballpark across the street -- a heavyweight title match between Ali and Ken Norton -- and he spoke ardently about bringing the first major boxing show to the new stadium.

Then he was asked about mixed martial arts leeching away his sport's fan base and, never one to refuse a bully pulpit, offered a politically incorrect yet scathingly candid answer.

"Our audience in boxing is ethnic: Hispanic, Filipino, Puerto Rican, Mexican," Arum said into the glass eye of a video camera. "UFC are a bunch of skinhead white guys watching people in the ring who also look like skinhead white guys."