By Sean Jones: In great news for fans, WBO welterweight champion Terence ‘Bud’ Crawford and Shawn Porter have agreed to a deal to fight on November 20th at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. The Crawford vs. Porter fight will be shown on ESPN+ pay-per-view.
The deal was made in time to avert the purse bid that was scheduled for today, Tuesday, at 12 noon at the WBO offices in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Kevin Iole is reporting Crawford’s promoters at Top Rank reached a deal with Porter’s management at Premier Boxing Champions [PBC] for November 20th at the Michelob Ultra Center at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
Top Rank has wanted for years to match Crawford against elite fighters, but it just hasn’t happened.
The combination of things has prevented that from happening. For starters, Crawford is a switch-hitting fighter and a counter puncher.
Also, Crawford has shown the tendency to move a lot when facing opposition with power, making it difficult to land their shots.
On top of that, Crawford isn’t great at marketing his fights the way other fighters do because of his retiring personality. Crawford isn’t an outgoing type of individuals like Teofimo Lopez or some of the other young fighters.
Porter’s pressure style of fighting will make it interesting because he’s going to take away Crawford’s counter-punching ability, forcing him to either brawl on the inside or run. If Crawford runs, he’s going to stink out the joint on November 20th and likely get booed by the Las Vegas fans.
This has got to make Top Rank pleased, as they could avoid the purse bid for today, which could have been difficult for them to win.
Top Rank and Premier Boxing Champions reached a deal hours ahead of a scheduled purse bid for a WBO welterweight title fight between champion Terence Crawford and Shawn Porter on Nov. 20 at the Michelob Ultra Center at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
For Crawford, who spent his entire career facing B and C-level opposition, he’s facing his first A-level guy in Porter, and there’s no way of knowing how he’ll do.
“Porter is without a doubt Crawford’s toughest fight at welterweight, and I think Crawford may be Porter’s toughest fight,” Top Rank vice president Carl Moretti said to Yahoo Sports. “This fight … wow. It’s going to be something.”
Crawford is 33 and no longer a spring chicken, but neither is Porter. Top Rank has done a great job of maneuvering Crawford through the different minefields of danger at 135, 140, and 147.
“I’m very excited,” 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 shown them my best yet.”
Yeah, it’s difficult for Crawford to show he’s the best when he’s fighting guys like Amir Khan, Jeff Horn, Jose Benavidez, and Kell Brook. Those aren’t great welterweights, none of them.
Thanks to Top Rank, Crawford is still unbeaten, and some boxing fans believe he’s the #1 welterweight and deserving of the #1 spot in the pound-for-pound list.
Obviously, you can’t say that because Crawford has never fought any A-level fighters before, so opinions about his talent are based on guesswork because he’s facing lesser opposition.
I mean, the guys that Crawford has fought would be mowed down by younger, unproven welterweights like Jaron Ennis and Vergil Ortiz Jr.
You could take Ennis and Ortiz Jr. and put them in with everyone that Crawford has faced, and they’d end up with the same record as him, but probably more knockouts because those guys hit harder than him.
It’s more than a little surprising that Crawford and Porter were willing to agree to a deal because they have made a small fortune if they’d dug in their heels and let the fight go to a purse bid.
Look at Teofimo Lopez as an example of what can happen when you go through a purse bid.
Teofimo stubbornly resisted negotiating a deal with Top Rank for a non-marquee title defense with little-known George Kambosos Jr, letting it go to a purse bid, and he’s now getting $4 million for a fight that is basically a horrendous mismatch.
Kambosos Jr. has virtually zero chance of winning, and the fight promises to be a one-sided massacre.
The downside of Teofimo forcing a purse bid for his fight with Kambosos Jr is that he’s now been waiting for an entire year to get that fight out of the way.
If Teofimo hadn’t been so insistent on going the purse bid round, he probably would have made more money overall if he’d just negotiated a deal with Top Rank. Oh well, I guess Teofimo might think twice next time.