By Chris Williams: Shawn Porter is ready to stop Terence Crawford’s complaining about no one wanting to fight him. ‘Showtime’ Porter (31-3-1, 17 KOs) says he’ll fight WBO welterweight champion Crawford (37-0, 28 KOs) if no one else will, but he’s got to say yes.
Porter won’t agree to Crawford fight for chump change
There’s a big question mark whether Top Rank promoter Bob Arum will be willing to take a chance on putting a fight together between Crawford and Porter.
Arum revealed recently that he lost enough money on Crawford’s fights to build a house in beautiful Beverly Hills in California.
You can only imagine how Arum feels about that. Will Arum want to continue to lose money on Crawford by putting together a fight between him and Porter that won’t sell beaten on PPV?
If Crawford gets beaten by Porter, it’s doubtful that Arum will make back the money he lost from him in the past. You can forget about Errol Spence Jr looking Crawford’s way if he gets beaten by Porter.
For that fight to happen, it would likely need to be on pay-per-view, and with Crawford’s track record, it could be another disaster like the Amir Khan fight.
Porter isn’t going to take a fight with Crawford for chickenfeed. For that fight to happen, Crawford might need to sacrifice some of his purse for Porter to agree to it.
It’s unrealistic to expect a popular fighter like Porter to agree to fight Crawford for $1 million, which is what he might be stuck with.
Thus far, Crawford, 33, hasn’t agreed to a fight with Porter, and it’s easy to see why. Porter is a bad style match-up for Crawford, and he’s better than everyone he’s ever fought before by a mile.
If Crawford takes a fight with Porter, the money won’t be nearly as good as it would be if he were to face pay-per-view star Errol Spence Jr. So if Crawford loses to Porter, as many boxing fans think he will, it’ll end his hopes for that one big payday against Spence.
Porter ready to fight Crawford
“I’m like, ‘Damn, man, all right. I’ll fight him. If nobody will, I’ll fight him.’ You know?” said Shawn Porter in talking about Terence Crawford on The Last Stand podcast.
“With me, it’s 100-percent the competitive spirit that I have and the willingness to fight someone who a lot of people feel he’s feared, and a lot f people don’t want to fight him,” said Porter about Bud Crawford.
Terence hasn’t shown interest in wanting to fight Porter, and it’s so easy t see why. Crawford fights on the outside and at medium range, but he’s not good at fighting in close.
Porter would make sure that he kept Crawford trapped in a war of attrition in close, and it could get very ugly for the Top Rank fighter.
If Crawford starts running as he did in the 12th round in his fight against Viktor Postol, he’ll get booed out of the joint.
Crawford’s inside fighting ability is similar to that of Callum Smith. In other words, Crawford can’t fight on the inside, and he would get taken apart by Porter in the same way Paule Malignaggi and Devin Alexander did.
Crawford doesn’t want the problems that Porter would present to him, which is why he’s never taken the risk of fighting him.
Porter has been broadcasting his interest in fighting Crawford all year long, yet he’s not agreed to fight him. Now, why is that? It’s because he’s afraid.
Crawford knows Porter is too good for him, so he’s not going to take that risk and mess up the dough that he can make fighting Spence if he can somehow complain his way into that fight.
Porter: I’ll fight Crawford if he agrees
“Really, the only thing stopping me, preventing me from fighting Terence Crawford, is the fact that he and I both haven’t said yes.
“If he’s willing to say yes, the fight will happen,” Porter said of Crawford.
Arum would like to match Crawford against Errol Spence, but with Terence talking crazy numbers in wanting a 60-40 split in his favor, that fight has no chance of happening in this lifetime.
If Crawford accepted the reasonable 70-30 offer from Spence, we could have a fight between them. Right now, Crawford’s ego is out of control from all the compliments the ESPN commentators like Max Kellerman and Tim Bradley have been pouring over his head.
Porter is Crawford’s mandatory challenger with the WBO, so that fight will have to happen soon. The only way Crawford can squirm out of it is if he vacates his WBO title, which I don’t think he’ll do.
Crawford should vacate and get ranked with the IBF or WBC to become Spence’s mandatory. He won’t do that, though, because the money he’ll get as a mandatory will be even less than he’d get with the 70-30 split that Spence is offering him.