By Chris Williams: Bob Arum admits that he has no confidence a fight between Terence Crawford and Shawn Porter would sell on pay-per-view because Terence has never proven that he can sell.
Arum says he doesn’t know who would pay for a fight between Crawford and Porter.
It’s not as if Arum can take a match between Crawford and Porter and shop it overseas to one of the Middle Eastern countries like he attempted to do recently when negotiating a fight between Manny Pacquiao and Terence.
Arum has no confidence Crawford can sell
Unfortunately, Arum doesn’t believe that his unbeaten WBO 147-lb strap holder Crawford would sell in a title defense against former IBF/WBC champion Porter, which is sad because it’s the best option the Nebraska native has for a high-caliber fight at the moment.
At the moment, Crawford, 33, has virtually zero options for a big-money clash after losing out on the match against Pacquiao and pricing himself out of an Errol Spence Jr clash.
If Crawford had agreed to the 60-40 split Spence offered him, those two could have been fighting now. The way things look now, Crawford will be lucky if he can get a 70-30 split after Errol takes care of Pacquiao on August 21.
Arum wanted to match WBO welterweight champion Crawford (37-0, 28 KOs) against Pacquiao in Abu Dhabi recently. Still, when the money failed to come through, the Top Rank promoter was unwilling to take the risk of moving the clash to the United States.
While it may look bad in the eyes of boxing fans that Arum is openly admitting that he’s not confident that a Crawford
“We could make a big fight for (Crawford) against (former welterweight champion Shawn) Porter, but who’s going to pay for it?” said Bob Arum to The Athletic.
“There’s a limit to what I can get out of ESPN, and on pay-per-view, I have no confidence it’s going to do a big number. Crawford has never done anything on pay-per-view. Nothing against him, it is what it is,” said Arum.
So there it is, folks. Arum is throwing Crawford under the bus by openly admitting to the boxing world that he’s at his wit end, unwilling to stick his neck out to put a fight together between him and Porter.
Spence getting the Pacquiao fight
Arum already said that he lost enough money on Crawford’s fights to build a house in California’s swanky Beverly Hills area.
“People will say, ‘Why didn’t you try to make Pacquiao vs. Crawford from the United States?’ Because as a business person, I just thought it was too risky,” said Arum last Saturday night in an interview with ESNEWS on why he didn’t attempt to set up a fight between Crawford and Pacquiao in the United States.
“Now, hopefully, they come out OK with Pacquiao and [Spence], but it’s risking a lot of money to do it,” said Arum.
It’s got to be tough on Arum for him to be seeing Pacquiao sign for a fight against Errol Spence Jr on August 21 in Las Vegas.
If that fight turns out to be successful in terms of selling tickets and bringing in pay-per-view buys on FOX Sports, Arum will be dealing with a lot of criticism from boxing fans for failing to take a chance on moving the Pacquiao-Crawford fight to the U.S after the deal fell through to stage it in Abu Dhabi.