By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum says his fighter WBO light welterweight champion Terence Crawford (28-0, 20 KOs) has signed the contract for a unification fight against the unbeaten WBC 140lb champion Viktor Postol (28-0, 12 KOs), who Arum also promotes.
This will be a pay-per-view fight on HBO on July 23 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Crawford-Postol is a good fight, but on HBO PPV? Nah. I’m not up for that. I hope Arum doesn’t overpay Crawford and Postol with more guarantee money than the fight can ever hope to make on HBO PPV, because I don’t see this fight bringing in a lot of PPV buys.
Crawford might be able to get some of his fans from his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska to pitch in to see it on PPV, but I don’t see there being a lot of fans outside of Nebraska buying this one.
“Arum says @budcrawford402 has signed for the Postol 140 unification fight. A few minor things remain on Postol “but it’ll get done.” #boxing,” said Dan Rafael on his Twitter.
Crawford is seen by Arum as someone that can be a future star, but thus far he hasn’t been matched against big enough names for him to realize his potential.
Instead of Crawford being put in with guys like Adrien Broner, Lucas Matthysse, Lamont Peterson and Danny Garcia, we’ve seen Crawford matched against Hank Lundy, Thomas Dulorme, Yuriorkis Gamboa, Dierry Jean and Raymundo Beltran. I don’t care how good Crawford looked in those fights. If Arum doesn’t start matching Crawford against better fighters, he’ll eventually age out and have nothing to show for his career other than a bunch of wins over the likes of Lundy, Jean, Beltran and Dulorme. There are new fighters coming along all the time. Crawford already missed his time to move up to 147 two years ago. Now if he moves up, he’ll find himself getting picked off by the likes of the arguably more talented Errol Spence Jr.
If all Arum wants to do is match Crawford against his own fighters once he does move up to welterweight, then Crawford is going to be stuck fighting Jessie Vargas four or five times. Tim Bradley won’t fight him because they’re friends.
Postol, 5’11”, is coming off of a career best win in defeating Matthysse by a 10th round stoppage win last October. Postol used his height to dominate the shorter 5’6” Matthysse and drop him in the 10th round.
Crawford, 5’8”, will be giving up three inches in height and reach to the Ukrainian Postol. It could be difficult for Crawford to dominate like he’s done in the past because he’s always been the bigger fighter in his fights, and he’s used his height and reach to control his shorter opponents.
Arum is making an unusual move in matching his fighters together before they’ve picked up a large fan base, but it looks like he has little choice. If Arum waits for years and years and lets the Crawford vs. Postol fight marinate, they may never become stars, especially if they’re going to be matched against weaker opposition.