By Sean Jones: Top Rank and PBC were unable to iron out a deal for the Terence Crawford vs. Shawn Porter fight to beat the WBO’s deadline of last Friday, so a purse bid has been scheduled for September 2nd at the headquarters.
Interestingly, the Crawford – Porter purse bid will be streamed live at 12:00 p.m. ET on the WBO’s Facebook site, allowing the boxing fans to get a close look at the process.
It should be interesting to see if Top Rank wins the bid this time, as they came up short for the Teofimo Lopez vs. George Kambosos Jr purse bid earlier this year, losing it to Triller Fight Club.
It’ll be amusing if Triller wins the Crawford vs. Porter purse bid and wind up struggling to get the fight staged. Boxing fans won’t want to wait until 2022 to get a chance to see Crawford defend against Porter finally.
You can’t blame Top Rank for not wanting to try and outbid Triller, as they arguably overpaid for that low-level title defense for unbeaten lightweight champion Teofimo. What an albatross that fight has turned out to be.
Putting that fight on has turned out to be a pure mess for Triller, as they STILL haven’t done so.
Porter will have a lot of ring rust
Former IBF/WBC welterweight champion Porter (31-3-1, 17 KOs) hasn’t fought in 12 months. By the time he does get inside the ring with Crawford, he’ll likely have been out of the ring for 15 months. That’s a long time.
Whatever chances Porter had of beating Crawford may have gone out the window due to his long period of inactivity. Also, Porter hadn’t faced a quality opponent since his loss to Errol Spence Jr two years ago in September 2019.
Porter fought in August 2020, beating fringe contender Sebastian Formella by a lopsided 12 round decision.
Out of all the guys that Porter could have fought at welterweight, he chose Formella, and it was surprising that he would take such a soft opponent.
Porter might as well be in the same position Manny Pacquiao was in coming off a two-year layoff, as you can’t count ‘Showtime’ Shawn’s last fight against the light-hitting Formella as being a true fight because it was such a mismatch.
What really looked bad is how young 24-year-old prospect Conor Benn turned around and fought Formella last November and looked better beating him than Porter had.
WBO welterweight champion Crawford (37-0, 28 KOs) last fought in November, obliterating the faded former IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook in a fourth round knockout.
Crawford was in negotiations for a fight with Manny Pacquiao, but the Filipino star went in the other direction towards a fight with Errol Spence Jr.
Losing that fight was a bitter pill for Crawford to swallow, particularly after seeing Pacquiao’s career finished off by replacement opponent Yordenis Ugas last weekend.