By Jeff Aranow: Brian McIntyre, the trainer for WBO light welterweight champion Terence Crawford, believes that his fighter is in position to get a fight against fellow Top Rank fighter Manny Pacquiao for later this year if they beat WBC 140lb champion Viktor Postol (28-0, 12 KOs) this Saturday night on July 23 on HBO pay-per-view from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Crawford is the favorite to win the fight over the 32-year-old Postol, but it’s unclear whether a win over the little known Ukrainian will be enough for him to get the fight with Pacquiao. It’s not up to Crawford or even the 84-year-old Top Rank boss Bob Arum who the opponent will be for Pacquiao.
Arum has kind of jumped the gun a little by saying that the three candidates for Pacquiao’s next fight is the winner of the Crawford-Postol fight and WBO welterweight champion Jessie Vargas. Pacquiao and his adviser Michael Koncz might not be too eager to face any of those guys, who all happen to be promoted by Arum.
Some boxing fans see Arum as ruling out non-Top Rank fighters so that one of his own guys from his promotional company gets the fight with Pacquiao. If that’s true, then it would be sad because it could be interpreted as self-serving move to exclude other fighters that might bring more money to Pacquiao in order to make sure that his own guys from his Top Rank stable benefit. Pacquiao could ruin Arum’s plans if he tells the aging promoter to find a popular guy for him to fight instead of the gang of three that he’s hand-picked for him to choose from.
“And now it’ll be perfect timing for us to get to Pacquiao … If they do offer the fight, we’ll [beat Pacquiao] too,” said Crawford’s trainer McIntyre to the latimes.com.
Arum sees Crawford as “the next American boxing superstar,” according to the LA Times. I’m not sure if that’s going to be the case or not. Crawford is in the wrong division at light welterweight for him to become the next American superstar. For Crawford to have a chance of realizing Arum’s dreams of superstardom, he’s probably going to need to move up to 147 to have a chance of doing that.
Arum isn’t going to be able to do much with Crawford if he keeps him at 140 and continues to funnel lightweights like Dierry Jean and Raymundo Beltran in for him to look good against. Once Crawford’s fight against Postol is out of the way, Arum is going to run into problems with finding popular opponents for him to fight. Arum can pretty much forget about guys like Adrien Broner doing him a favor by fighting Crawford, because that’s clearly not going to happen.
Arum BADLY needs Pacquiao to fight Crawford for him to have a chance at becoming a star. I don’t know that beating Pacquiao will turn Crawford into a star. I think Arum is not seeing things straight if that’s his belief. It’s too late in the game for Pacquiao to turn anyone into a star by them beating him. Crawford could certainly beat Pacquiao, and find himself in the same situation as he is now where he’s likely going to be bringing in poor pay-per-view numbers on Saturday night. There’s not a lot of boxing fans that are eager to pay the $49.99 to $59.99 asking price for the Crawford-Postol card on Saturday night to see two guys that they’re not familiar with.
“As you keep winning and rise to the top,” said Crawford to the latimes.com, “you’re going to be on pay-per-view. It comes with the territory. I look forward to doing more of it.”
Crawford thinks that by fighters winning, they become PPV stars. That’s not the case. If it were the case, guys like Gennady Golovkin and Roman Gonzalez, two fighters with arguably much more exciting fighting styles than Crawford, would already be PPV stars. If all it took to become a pay-per-view attraction is to win every time, Tim Bradley would have been a PPV star a long time ago. You can win all your fights and still not become a PPV attraction.
You need to have an exciting style of fighting, charisma, talent, and it helps to have a big built in fan base. Guys like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez aren’t the most talented fighters in the sport, but he’s got a large fan base that supports him in the U.S and in Mexico. Crawford’s problem is that he doesn’t look dominating enough in his fights for him to be seen as a future PPV guy. In the fights that he wins, his opponents always have moments where they’re more than competitive. You don’t see that with stars like Golovkin and Mayweather. Those guys totally dominate. Crawford only dominates the limited guys that Arum puts in with him like Beltran and Dierry Jean.