By Chris Williams: Bob Arum says he’ll be announcing some “high-caliber” shows next week slated for ESPN and ESPN+ for boxing resumes in June. Although Arum isn’t revealing the names of the fighters he plans on putting on the shows, he says it’ll be fighting that have fought in the feature and co-feature bouts in the past.
As expected, the top names won’t be available for the upcoming fights. In other words, we won’t see Tyson Fury vs. Deontay Wilder. Arum is talking about wanting to take that fight to Macao, China. It’ll be interesting to see how Team Wilder reacts to that idea.
Arum may need to focus on anther country if he wants to get the Fury vs. Wilder 3 fight made. What he needs is a country where fans can attend, and he can get a monstrous site fee.
Lomachenko vs. Teofimo not happening soon
We won’t see the unification clash between lightweight champions Vasily Lomachenko and Teofimo Lopez, says Arum. That’s not surprising because it’s a fight that’ll bring in a large gate when it does take place. They were supposed to fight in May in New York.
With some of the mismatches we’ve seen from WBO super bantamweight champion Emanuel Navarrete, he would be an ideal fighter for one of Arum’s June cards on ESPN.
Top Rank has kept the hard-hitting Navarrete (31-1, 27 KOs) busy since he captured the World Boxing Organization 122-pound title in December 2018. Since winning the WBO belt, Navarrete has successfully defended his five times against largely over-matched opposition.
“It’ll be all fighters who have either appeared on the main event or in the semi-main event on past shows televised on ESPN or streamed on ESPN+,” Arum said to ESPN. “So they’ll be high-caliber shows.
“They will not be the big, big fights, like the [Vasiliy] Lomachenko-[Teofimo] Lopez fight for the reason that Lomachenko is still stuck in Ukraine and we don’t know when we’re going to get him over here to the United States.
WBO super featherweight champion Jamel Herring will have a stay busy fight against hopefully, a contender. Herring vs. Carl Frampton was in the planning stage, but that’s not going to happen due to the travel restrictions.
“Herring will probably fight somebody else, defend his 130-pound championship,” Arum said.
Crawford not interested in fighting without fans
One fighter we definitely WON’T be seeing is WBO welterweight champion Terence Crawford, who recently said that for him to fight behind closed doors, he’ll need to be paid extra to make up for the gate money that he would be losing.
Arum isn’t likely to produce the extra money to pay Crawford (36-0, 27 KOs), which means we probably won’t see the Nebraska native for the remainder of 2020. The fighter that some believe the 32-year-old Crawford will be fighting next is former IBF 147-pound champion Kell Brook.
But there’s no chance that the Crawford vs. Brook fight can take place while the travel restrictions are still underway. Besides, Crawford’s desire to be paid extra to fight without fans will likely be a non-starter with Arum.
