Arum expects 100K PPV buys for Crawford-Postol

By Boxing News - 04/29/2016 - Comments

crawford4By Chris Williams: WBO light welterweight champion Terence Crawford (28-0, 20 KOs) and WBC champion Victor Postol (28-0, 12 KOs) will be fighting on July 23 on HBO pay-per-view in Las Vegas, Nevada.

It’s a controversial move on the part of their promoter Bob Arum, who says he had no choice but to put the fight on PPV due to HBO not having enough dates to put the fight on regular HBO. Arum says he expects the Crawford vs. Postol fight to bring in 100,000 PPV buys. He’s not expecting big numbers like his past stars Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao when they first fought on PPV as the headliners.

The 100K PPV buys for Crawford vs. Postol would put it at the same level as Gennady Golovkin’s recent PPV fight against David Lemieux. Arum says he would be selling the Crawford vs. Postol fight for $50 on PPV, and packaging it with WBO super middleweight champion Gilberto Ramirez and featherweight Oscar Valdez.

“I have a whole history of looking for opportunities to launch a fighter on pay-per-view,” Arum said to Ringtv.com. “You cannot launch a fighter on pay-per-view and anticipate 500,000 or a million buys. I do it like I did with (Floyd) Mayweather, like I did with (Erik) Morales, like I did with (Manny) Pacquiao — 100,000 buys, hundred and a quarter and you build on it.”

I think 100,000 is way too ambitious a number for the Crawford vs. Postol fight card, given that neither of them are well known at this point in their careers. Crawford has very little charisma and he doesn’t show much emotion at all. With Mayweather and Pacquiao, they had personalities and blazing hand speed.

Crawford shows almost no emotion during interviews, and he’s not blazing fast. He has some hand speed but he’s definitely not Mayweather or Pacquiao. My guess is Crawford-Postol brings in 10,000 to 20,000 PPV buys. I think Arum is going to learn a tough lesson that you cannot try and sell fighters to the boxing public without them being popular first.

I would never pay a dollar to see Postol or Crawford unless they were fighting Mayweather, Pacquiao or Golovkin, which they obviously aren’t and likely never will. If Arum sold the Crawford-Postol fight for $1, I’d be tempted to purchase it, but no more than that.

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“Now HBO told us that they have all these fighters,” Arum said. “The best you’re going to do is two HBO dates a year. Crawford wants to fight more. Well, that’s a perfect opportunity for me to do it on pay-per-view. I’m not looking to do half a million homes (on July 23).”
Well, if Arum isn’t expecting big PPV numbers for the Crawford vs. Postol fight, then maybe he’ll be happy with 10,000 buys.