By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is expecting decent pay-per-view numbers for his fighter WBO light welterweight champion Terence Crawford’s first fight on HBO PPV on July 23 against a still to be determined opponent.
Arum thinks Crawford’s fight will bring in around 300,000 pay-per-view buys on HBO. That would be three times the number of buys that Gennady Golovkin’s fight against David Lemieux brought in last October on HBO. That fight brought in a rumored 100,000 buys.
Arum says he’s negotiating with Crawford’s opponent, and he feels that it’s a tougher challenge for the 28-year-old Crawford than Ruslan Provodnikov would have been. That was the initial opponent that Arum wanted for Crawford, but he instead will be fighting John Molina Jr. on June 11th on Showtime from the Turning Stone Casino in Verona, New York. Unless Arum can get someone like Viktor Postol or Lamont Peterson, it’s hard to imagine the fight brining in a good amount of PPV buys.
“It’ll be probably midway…it’s not a pay-per-view that we anticipate doing 7-800,000 buys or more,” said Arum to Fighthype. “It’s more of, you know, about 300 [thousand]. It’ll be a big pay-per-view. It’ll have some great fights on the card and that’s what we’re planning for July 23rd, maybe in Los Angeles. We have names. We’re looking at an opponent more difficult than Provodnikov. Let’s see if we can come to terms,” said Arum.
It’s hard to imagine Arum being able to get someone better than Provodnikov for Crawford unless he puts Postol in with him. I don’t think Arum is going to make that move yet. I get the feeling that Arum wants to let the Crawford vs. Postol fight marinate a little longer.
I don’t think for a second that Crawford will bring in 300,000 pay-per-view buys on HBO. No way do I see that happening.
I think Golovkin is more popular than Crawford. If Golovkin can only get 100K PPV buys on HBO, then someone like Crawford would likely be half of that maybe 25 percent of that. I can see Crawford 25,000 PPV buys at best. It sounds like a real titanic of a disaster PPV card if Crawford is going to be headlining it. He’s a good fighter, but he’s not a hugely popular guy. Putting Crawford on PPV just sounds like something doomed for massive failure. I would never buy a PPV fight headlined by Crawford unless he were fighting someone like Miguel Cotto, Gennady Golovkin, Manny Pacquiao, Danny Garcia, Keith Thurman or Tim Bradley. Since he’s probably not going to ever fight any of them, then there’s reason for me to buy one of Crawford’s PPV cards. I wouldn’t pay to see Crawford fight Postol. That’s regular HBO in my book. It would have to be someone that has a chance of beating Crawford, and I wouldn’t want to see an old star like Cotto melting down to 140 to give Crawford a handicap.
It might turn a profit if Arum doesn’t overpay Crawford and whoever his opponent is. But I think Arum is kidding himself if he thinks that Crawford can do 300,000 buys. Those are the same number of buys that the highly popular Saul “Canelo” Alvarez brought in for his fights on PPV against Alfredo Angulo and Erislandy Lara.
I don’t see Crawford as being even remotely close to Canelo as far as popularity goes. Crawford might be a better fighter for his division than Canelo is for his division at middleweight, but Canelo is simply the more popular fighter if you ask me. If Canelo-Angulo only did 300,000 PPV buys, then I would say Crawford gets around 20,000 to 25,000 PPV buys. It might even be lower than that if Arum picks another guy like Hank Lundy or Dierry Jean for Crawford to fight. The match-making for Crawford has been steadily going downhill since his win over Yuriorkis Gamboa a couple of years ago.
If Crawford is going to keep fighting on PPV, I think it’s going to stunt his career in a big way. You don’t take a guy that’s already little known with the casual boxing fans and stick him on PPV where next to no one will see him fight. That means even less people see him. If Crawford is going to continue on PPV for the remainder of his career, then I can see a long future of tiny PPV events stretching out for the next 10 to 15 years, if Arum keeps him that long. You never know.
Will Crawford stay with Top Rank when his contract expires at some point? It’ll depend on the matches that Arum puts him in. Right now, I’m not overwhelmed with the fights that Crawford has had in the last few years. He needs to be fighting Arum’s best guys like Tim Bradley, Jessie Vargas and Postol. If he’s not fighting them, then he’s going to be stuck fighting the likes of Lundy and Dierry Jean. Arum couldn’t even get Provodnikov for Crawford. That’s not a good sign.
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