Michael Marley
6/25/2007

This is the man who is push, push, pushing Bob Arum and Top Rank to settle its legal dispute over Filipino ring icon Manny Pacquaio with Oscar De La Hoya and his Golden Boy Promotions. And he is push, push, pushing in the other direction as well.

That's his job description, getting parties at odds to meet somewhere in the middle and move on in their lives. One reporter described Weinstein this way: "He is simultaneously an impartial outsider and a knowledgeable insider showing diplomacy and handling big personalities with ease."

This is former San Francisco Superior Court Judge Daniel Weinstein and he works for JAMS, a highly-regarded national mediation and alternative dispute firm. He is also a professor of mediation advocacy at Stanford University.

Will this man be the "referee" who restores sanity to Pacman's boxing career and causes the adversaries to put down their legal weapons in the best interests of all concerned? I hope so and so do you, fight fans.

Let's think positive because Boxingconfidential.com has learned that at 3:30 PDT Monday afternoon the parties were still talking about a possible resolution of their dispute other than going to trial in a Los Angeles federal courtroom.

Bob Arum and Top Rank President Todd duBoef were involved in the talks again after Judge Weinstein gave both sides a timeout last week so that TR could properly promote the Jose Luis Castillo-Ricky Hatton show in Las Vegas.

But they went back to mediation business Monday morning and that alone tells you that progess has been made. This is a man who has been in the middle in disputes and litigation involving Enron, Qwest, NYSE, NASDAQ, Apple, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle and Hewlett-Packard so he is not exactly chopped liver in his chosen field.

Judge Weinstein donated $1 million in April  to the JAMS Foundation, which supports the company's mission of mediation rather than trials.

(Michael Marley studied mediation at Fordham University Law School.)

(mlcmarley@aol.com)