By Jef Aronow: Kell Brook called out Terence Crawford today on social media, letting him know that he’s ready to face him in his next fight on ESPN in November. Crawford’s promoter Bob Arum revealed on Wednesday that Bud will be fighting on either November 14 or November 21.
Arum mentioned Manny Pacquiao as the opponent that he’d like to schedule for Crawford (36-0, 27 KOs) to face, but that fight has no chance of happening. Indeed, when Manny Pacquiao Promotions president Sean Gibbons heard about Arum saying that he’s negotiating a fight between Terence and Manny, he said, “That’s news to me.”
It’s possible that Arum is just name-dropping Pacquiao’s name to help Crawford’s popularity by getting boxing fans excited at seeing him fight in November. However, the fans are going to be disappointed when Crawford winds up facing someone else, possibly another obscure fighter with an odd name and an inflated record filled with no-name opponents.
It’s too obvious now that Arum is using Pacquiao’s name to get attention for Crawford, and it’s a weak way of helping him increase his fan base. If Arum wants to make a star out of Crawford, he needs to start putting him in against talented fighters because he’s been facing beatable opposition for long.
It’s almost as if Arum has Crawford stuck on the tune-up mode, and he can’t snap out of it.
Brook calls out Crawford
“Terence Crawford, if you’re looking for a dance partner, uncle Bob [Arum] knows about the fight, do you want the fight? Let’s go in November, baby,” said Kell Brook on social media.
Brook (39-2, 27 KOs) would be an improvement over the guys that Crawford has been defending his WBO welterweight title against in the last two years. Since winning the WBO 147-pound title in 2018, Crawford has defended it three times successfully, beating these fighters: Jose Benavidez, Amir Khan, and Egidijus Kavaliauskas.
Crawford and Top Rank took a lot of criticism from boxing fans for picking the over-the-hill Khan for Bud’s title defense in April of last year. Besides the choice being a poor one, boxing fans were hopping mad that Top Rank sold the Crawford vs. Khan mismatch on ESPN pay-per-view. In hindsight, that was a mistake, as it was such a weak fight.
Brook, 34, has lost a couple of fights in the last four years in injury-related stoppage losses to Gennady Golovkin and Errol Spence Jr. But in both of those fights, Brook was competitive and had his moments.