By Chris William: Terence ‘Bud’ Crawford sent a message to Errol Spence Jr on Tuesday on social media, letting the unified welterweight champion know he’s ready to restart negotiations.
Some could interpret this as a signal that Crawford realizes he was wrong in walking away from the negotiations, so now he’s slinking back, head down, letting Spence know that he messed up, looking for forgiveness from the A-side.
Spence (28-0, 22 KOs) said last Saturday night that he’s interested in still fighting Crawford, but not necessarily in his next fight in the first quarter of 2023.
This might be the 35-year-old Crawford’s last chance to get a fight against Spence because if he does another disappearing act in the middle of the negotiations to take an easy money match, that could be it.
“@ErrolSpenceJr, I’m ready when you wanna spin the block. Just giving you a heads up is all.😉,” said Terence Crawford on social media Tuesday to Errol Spence Jr, letting him know that he’s ready to begin negotiations again.
As it is, Spence is showing incredible patience to want to still want to negotiate with Crawford because that was unprofessional on his part to walk away from the talks without warning to go and fight David Avanesyan on BLK Prime PPV.
Crawford supposedly was paid $10 million for his mismatch against Avanesyan, but there are now rumors that his payday was far less than that number, possibly as low as $3 million.
More importantly, the pay-per-view numbers will be critical for Crawford because if all he has to show for his fight with Avanesyan is 10,000 PPV buys, he can forget about getting the split he’s hoping to get for a fight with Spence.
The only thing Crawford has going for him is his WBO belt because he can’t sell, and it doesn’t matter that he’s ranked high on the pound-for-pound rankings. Casual boxing fans don’t pay attention to pound-for-pound junk.
For Crawford to negotiate a good deal for himself, he will have to hope that Spence values his WBO belt enough to want to give him what he’s hoping to get.
If Crawford doesn’t get the Spence fight, he’s got Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis waiting to snatch his WBO trinket from him and send him fleeing to the 154-lb division on a losing note.
The chances are high that if Crawford doesn’t get the Spence fight, he’ll vacate his WBO title rather than stay and fight Boots Ennis and potentially get blown out of the water by the young lion. Ennis could already be the best fighter in the 147-lb division and ready to take scalps from all the top dogs.