Arum moving Crawford & Bradley to Showtime?

By Boxing News - 09/03/2016 - Comments

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By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is interested in moving several of his top fighters – Terence Crawford, Vasyl Lomachenko and Tim Bradley – to Showtime Boxing in order to get them fight dates. According to Arum, HBO doesn’t have the available budget to get fight dates for all of these guys.

Arum doesn’t want them to just sit and do nothing, so he’s looking to bring them over to Showtime. Arum likes the idea of matching WBC/WBO light welterweight champion Terence Crawford (29-0, 20 KOs) against fighters from Al Haymon’s stable. Haymon has a lot of good fighters like Adrien Broner that Arum could match Crawford against at 140.

Arum is also interested in matching the 33-year-old Bradley (33-2-1, 13 KOs) against Haymon’s fighters Danny Garcia, Shawn Porter, and Keith Thurman. It’s unclear if Arum would want to put Bradley in with Errol Spence Jr., a fighter that appears to be on his way to becoming the top name in the welterweight division within a short period of time.

Arum will be meeting with Showtime to talk about bringing in some of his top fighters to their network so that he can find dates for them. Whether he can eventually match them against Haymon’s fighters remain to be seen. Crawford doesn’t have a lot of fans, and his fighting style is pretty negative with him moving a lot. I’m not sure there would be much interest on Haymon’s part to match his fighters against Crawford. If Crawford didn’t move as much and was willing to stand in the pocket the way Floyd Mayweather Jr, I think there might be interest from Haymon. But Crawford’s style involves too much running, and it’s probably not interesting for Haymon.

“Al Haymon has a whole group of terrific fighters, welterweights that we can match with Bradley,” Arum said to RingTV.com. “It’s a huge fight — Garcia, Thurman, Porter (are other options). And Crawford — look at all the great fights we could make with Crawford.”

Crawford would be a good opponent for Errol Spence Jr. or Keith Thurman. I think Crawford would lose to both of those guys if he was willing to fight at 147, which I’m not sure that he will. With Crawford reportedly rehydrating to 157lbs for his fight against Viktor Postol on July 30, he should be able to fight at welterweight now. That’s 17 pounds that Crawford rehydrated for the Postol fight. You can argue that one of the reasons why Crawford is so successful at light welterweight now is because he’s basically a welterweight fighting in the 140lb division. As heavy as Crawford is, I don’t know why he wouldn’t want to move up in weight to fight guys in the welterweight division if Arum can get him fights.

I don’t see that Bradley has a long enough shelf life for him to get past more than one of Haymon’s fighters. I think Bradley could beat Danny Garcia in a tough fight, but I think he would come unglued against Thurman, Porter or Spence. It would be another loss for Bradley. If he gets beaten by Porter, Thurman and Spence, I don’t know if there would be any point in Haymon matching any of his other fighters against him. I think Bradley would be a useful opponent for Porter, but I think he’ll lose to him.

Once Bradley loses to Porter or any of those guys, then I can’t see him being useful. I see Bradley as a Shane Mosley type fighter. He’s decent, but he can’t punch for a welterweight, and he’s getting up there in age at 33. I see Bradley as old for his age due to all the ring wars he’s had. Yeah, you can still count on Bradley to beat guys like Brandon Rios, but he’s not a good fighter in my opinion. Bradley would definitely lose to Porter, Spence and Thurman. Arum can bring Bradley over to Showtime if he wants, but as far as him being useful as an opponent for Haymon’s fighters, I don’t see his shelf life being long enough for him to be useful at all.

“We have a meeting to discuss Lomachenko with Showtime,” Arum said. “As far as HBO is concerned, they could do (his next fight) but they got no money. It’s not only Lomachenko — it’s Tim Bradly, it’s Terence Crawford. We’re going to bring up all of our fighters.”