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By Chris Williams: While Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is reportedly interested in potentially matching WBO light welterweight champion Terence Crawford (27-0, 19 KOs) against Manny Pacquiao or Brandon Rios in his next fight, WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (32-1-1, 12 KOs) is not in the picture for the 28-year-old Crawford.

According to Dan Rafael, Crawford and Bradley are “good buddies and Crawford told me he would not fight him.” That’s unfortunate, because Crawford’s options are extremely limited once Pacquiao retires from the sport.

If all there is for Crawford is Brandon Rios, Viktor Postol, Jessie Vargas and Ruslan Provodnikov, then his options are very limited. Those fights could be exhausted within a couple of years unless Arum is interested in having Crawford fight those guys multiple times. We’ve seen Pacquiao fight Top Rank fighter Juan Manuel Marquez 4 times and Bradley 2 times.

Would Arum go so far as to match Crawford with Rios, Postol and Provodnikov 4 times each so that he has enough fights for the next five or six years? I think there would be a high attrition rate from the boxing fans in having to sit through those constant rematches, especially if Crawford wins all the fights. There’s only so many times you can go back to the well to keep showing the same fight if one guy is winning all of the fights.

With Crawford’s options very limited in the foreseeable future, Arum needs to reach out to other promoters like Oscar De La Hoya and to the high powered adviser Al Haymon to try and match Crawford against their fighters. Arum doesn’t need to have Crawford reduced to fight in club-like fights against the same guys over and over again.

Crawford needs to fight guys like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Miguel Cotto, Danny Garcia, Shawn Porter, Amir Khan, Errol Spence, Kell Brook, Jermall Charlo and Demetrius Andrade. There will obviously be a size problem for Crawford in some of those fights, but the money will be well worth it for him to face these guys. It’s the only way for Crawford to become a huge star.

He’s not going to become a huge star if all Arum is going to do is match him against Rios, Postol and Provodnikov for the next seven years of his career. I doubt that the boxing fans [the casual ones] will even care too much about a fight between Crawford and Postol, because neither guy is well-known.

For Crawford to become a big star, he’s going to need to risk his hide by facing much bigger guys like Jermall Charlo, Demetrius Andrade, Cotto, Canelo and the top welterweights like Porter, Garcia, Khan and Spence.

Not being able to match Crawford against Bradley is going to be a real negative for Crawford’s career. I don’t think he’s going to get a fight against Manny Pacquiao like Arum would like, because Pacquiao appears to be looking to end his career with a big money fight against the likes of Mayweather or someone popular. Pacquiao isn’t going to sacrifice a ton of money by fighting Crawford when there are better money fights out there like Mayweather and Khan.