By Allan Fox: WBO welterweight champion Terence Crawford will be getting $6 million+ guaranteed, and challenger Shawn Porter $4 million for their fight on November 20th at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
The money is going to be excellent for both fighters for their clash on ESPN+ pay-per-view.
One negative about the event is that with it being on ESPN+ pay-per-view, boxing fans will reportedly need to buy a subscription and purchase the event on PPV.
It obviously isn’t expensive to pay $6.99 per month for the subscription to ESPN+, but some boxing fans might not be keen on the idea of paying that much.
Ultimately, it’s up to the fan to decide. There are some good fights that Top Rank routinely shows on ESPN+, and this might be a good time for boxing fans to dive in. There’s also a package of ESPN+ with Hulu and Disney, which goes for $14 per month
Porter (31-3-1, 17 KOs) and Crawford (37-0, 28 KOs) both agreed to a deal on Tuesday for their November 20th fight in Las Vegas, which came just in time for the purse bid to be avoided that had been scheduled for noon.
Whether it was the right move on Crawford and Porter’s part of choosing not to go to a purse bid is debatable. Top Rank and PBC had to have put together a great deal for Crawford and Porter to choose not to take it to a purse bid.
“I’m very excited,” the Nebraska native Crawford said to ESPN. “Now I can show my talent, and maybe I can show something for the general public, something that they’ve never seen before. Because I don’t believe that I’ve showed them my best yet.”
This could be the bigger fight of Crawford’s career, so hopefully, he puts a good performance with the spotlight on him. Crawford will surely be the betting favorite over the 33-year-old Porter, who hasn’t fought in over a year.
Boxing fans have been calling for a fight between Crawford and Errol Spence Jr. for the last few years, but that’s not possible now. Perhaps the next best thing to Spence-Crawford is Crawford vs. Porter, as it’s a fight that will have a lot of fireworks.
Porter looked good in a losing effort to Spence in 2019, but he didn’t look great in his last fight against Sebastian Formella in August 2020.
Crawford stopped former IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook in the fourth round last November in an exciting fight. Porter might have a little ring rust, but with his mugging fighting style, it probably won’t matter.
The way that Porter tends to press his opponents, forcing them to fight on the inside, could be difficult for Crawford. If Crawford can’t get space to land his counter shots and utilize his switching stances, he could be in for a long night against Porter.