By Chris Williams: Terence Crawford says that if he and Errol Dpence Jr are going to fight, it will happen next year.
With that said, if Crawford’s next fight against David Avanesyan doesn’t do well on BLK pay-per-view on December 10th in terms of bringing in a lot of buys, it’s fair to say that he can permanently forget about a fight against Spence (28-0, 22 KOs) in the future.
Crawford will be limping back into the negotiations with PBC & Spence in a greatly weakened position after his fight with Avanesyan fails miserably to bring in buys from a disinterested public.
Terence isn’t helping his situation by giving countless interviews, talking mainly about Spence rather than his December 10th fight against Avanesyan. Crawford should be alerting the fans about this match instead of whining about the big fish [Spence] that threw the hook.
PBC won’t agree to what WBO welterweight champion Crawford is asking for unless he brings in a respectable amount of PPV buys for his title defense against Avanesyan, and that’s not likely to happen.
Avanesyan isn’t the type of opponent that Crawford needs for him to potentially bring in a lot of buys on BLK Prime PPV. That company should have lured Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis or Vergil Ortiz Jr to fight Crawford instead of Avanesyan.
Crawford’s fans in Nebraska will need to purchase the Avanesyan fight in high numbers for him to come out of this horrible match in a good bargaining position to get what he’s asking for in the negotiations with the popular superstar Spence in 2023.
Bud has many fans in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, but sadly they’ve not purchased his past fights on PPV in high enough numbers for any of them to be viewed as a huge success.
Now that Crawford is fighting the 34-year-old fringe contender Avaneysan (29-3-1, 17 KOs) on December 10th at the CHI Health Center in Omaha, this fight is likely to hurt his chances of getting what he wants when he revisits negotiations with Spence.
“I’m moving forward with my career. Me and Errol, if that fight happens, it will happen next year,” said Terence Crawford to Ariel Halwani’s podcast.
“I just don’t like the fact that a lot of people is blaming me for trying to make the fight…I just blame the business of boxing…I don’t blame myself for not one portion of the fight not being made.”
Look at it this way. If Crawford vs. Avanesyan bombs on pay-per-view, bringing in poor numbers, Bud won’t get anything he’s asking for in the negotiations with Spence.
If anything, Crawford will be worse off than he was before, and he’ll either need to accept the terms or walk away and hope that BLK Prime will want to continue throwing eight-figure offers at him.
If Crawford-Avanesyan is a total failure on PPV, it’s doubtful BLK Prime will want to get burned again by continuing to put on Crawford fights in the future.
You can say the same thing about Adrien Broner. That’s another fighter that BLK Prime has signed, and that guy is completely over-the-hill at 33.
Broner hasn’t enjoyed great success in over a decade, and he’s not going to suddenly find the fountain of youth to be the fighter he was from 2010 to 2012 when he was impressing fans with his knockout victories at 130 & 135.
“I feel like I agreed to everything I needed to agree to,” said Crawford about his negotiations with Spence.”I feel like I done everything that I was supposed to do as an independent fighter. It’s only so much I can do.”
Whatever Crawford was offered in this round of negotiations with Spence, it’s unrealistic to assume that the offer will be sweetened by PBC if Bud’s PPV fight against Avanesyan bombs on December 10th.
