By Chris Williams: WBO light welterweight champion Terence Crawford’s next fight on July 23rd could wind up on HBO PPV rather than on regular HBO, according to Dan Rafael. Crawford’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank is looking to move the 28-year-old Crawford to PPV.
It’s a premature obviously, but one of necessity due to HBO not having the budget to support a lot of the fights that would normally be televised on regular HBO. Moving Crawford to HBO PPV means that he’s going to need a big enough name to create interest in his fights. One name that Arum is thinking of putting in with Crawford is WBC light welterweight champion Viktor Postol.
He’s unbeaten and he’s coming off of an impressive 10th round knockout win over Lucas Matthysse in his last fight. However, even Postol vs. Crawford isn’t a PPV worthy fight. Arum wants to place his two Top Rank stable fighters Gilberto Ramirez and Jesse Hart in with each other on the Crawford undercard of his July 23rd fight.
Ramirez will need to win his fight next month against WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham to capture his WBO 168. Arum would then match Ramirez against #3 WBO Hart in an in house Top Rank fight. Hart has looked really flawed in some of his recent fights, and it’s very difficult to understand the World Boxing Organization’s ranking of him at No.3.
Hart needs a ton of work before he ever amounts to something in the 168lb division in my view. He doesn’t look like a quality fighter at this point. It should be an easy fight for Ramirez if he winds up facing Hart.
Arum was hoping to match Crawford against former WBO light welterweight champion Ruslan Provodnikov, but that fight failed to transpire after Provodnikov signed a three-fight deal with Showtime Boxing. Provodnikov will be facing John Molina next on June 11th at the Turning Stone Resort in Verona, New York. Even if Arum had signed Provodnikov for a fight against Crawford, that’s not a PPV worthy fight.
Provodnikov has lost two out of his last four fights, and it’s troubling that the WBO still has him ranked at #3 with their organization after all of those defeats. It’s got to be tough for the contenders ranked below him to see Provodnikov staying above them despite loss after loss. If Gennady Golovkin vs. David Lemieux only generated 100,000 PPV buys, then Crawford vs. Provovdnikov would be lucky if he brought even 10,000 PPV buys in my opinion? I don’t know of anyone that would want to pay to see a mismatch like that between two non-PPV fighters.
If all of Crawford’s fights are going to be on HBO PPV, then it’s going to be next to impossible for him to build a fan base, because I can’t imagine too many casual boxing fans wanting to pay to see an obscure fighter like Crawford on PPV. He’s not well known outside Nebraska, and Arum still has a ton of work to do in order to make Crawford a name.
“We’re definitely going July 23 but we’re not sure if it will be still be at the Forum, but that’s one of the places we’re considering,” Arum said to ESPN.com. “But we are doing a pay-per-view card around Crawford. It has to do with budgets and so forth. HBO is going to do a lot of its fights on pay-per-view.”
If Arum is going to force feed Crawford to the boxing fans on PPV, I can’t see him being able to go very far in building up a fan base. The only way for casual boxing fans to see Crawford’s fights is on replay a week later. Can you build a big fan base on showing replays a week later? Probably not.
Arum might need to think about some other way of turning Crawford into a star because putting him on HBO PPV right now is like putting the card before the horse. It’s a wrong-headed way of turning Crawford into a star, if he can even be turned into a star. Arum needs to coax his No.1 money fighter Manny Pacquiao to stay on for one more fight as a favor to him. Pacquiao could then face Crawford and maybe turn him into a star if he wins.
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