By Dan Ambrose: As many boxing fans expected, the July 30 unification fight between WBO light welterweight champion Terence “Bud” Crawford (29-0, 20 KOs) and WBC 140lb champion Viktor Postol (28-1, 12 KOs) resulted in low pay-per-view buys on HBO. According to Dan Rafael of ESPN, the fight generated between 50,000 and 60,000 pay-per-view buys. This is what Top Rank promoter Bob Arum reportedly told Rafael. The gate for the fight was a good one with it doing almost $750,000.
The 84-year-old promoter lost $100,000 on the fight, which wasn’t a lot considering the money that went into the card. Arum feels like it was well worth it due to him being able to have Crawford-Postol fight when he wanted the fight to take place, and he was also able to have featherweight Oscar Valdez’s fight televised as well.
Crawford won the fight by a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores of 118-107, 117-107 and 118-107. The fight took place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Terence Crawford’s resounding decision win against Viktor Postol to unify junior welterweight world titles on July 23 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas was a money loser, as most expected it would be, but it did not lose as much as Top Rank promoter Bob Arum thought it would. Arum told ESPN.com that the fight generated between 50,000 and 60,000 buys on HBO PPV but a stronger-than-expected gate helped offset losses, which he said amounted to about $100,000.
“We lost a little money but very little,” said Arum to ESPN.com. “Certainly if we had a rights fee that would have been the way to go but if I had looked for a rights fee I’d still be waiting for a phone call. Look, I got the fight on. It was an important fight for Terence’s career and he looked great. And (Oscar) Valdez won his (featherweight) title on the card, so it was worth it. I probably lost around $100,000 but the gate really surprised us. We were projecting it to be much lower but it did almost $750,000 and that really helped on a fight like this.”
Crawford looked good at times against Postol, but it was far from a great performance from the Omaha, Nebraska native. Crawford played it safe too much in the fight, and did too much moving in the second half of the contest. Instead of Crawford looking to close the show, he chose to run around the ring. The crowd was patient with him by not booing a lot, but there were still many unhappy boxing fans who didn’t like the way that Crawford was sticking his tongue out at Postol in the 12th while running from him. It was not the kind of performance that you’d like to see from someone who is being pegged as a future PPV attraction.
If you look at how Manny Pacquiao fought his entire career with him making it exciting with his action packed fights, Crawford was on the opposite side of the spectrum with him playing it safe and looking to do just enough to win the rounds. In other words, it was not a Golovkin-esque or Pacquiao-esque performance from Crawford.
With the way Crawford fought so cautiously against Postol, he may have ruined his chances for a fight against Pacquiao. He may have also ruined it for himself to attract more boxing fans to want to see his fights. Crawford needs to realize that in order to win over more fans, he’s got to become an exciting fighter to watch like Golovkin. Crawford’s counter punching style of fighting is not thrilling to watch. It’s about as exciting to watch as sitting and watching paint dry in the afternoon sun.
If Arum wants to turn Crawford into a PPV attraction, then he needs to sit him down and tell him how he needs to fight from now on. Crawford has to takes more risks for him to produce knockouts because he’s not going to be able to become a PPV attraction fighting the way he’s doing right now. It would obviously make Arum a happy man if Crawford could become a PPV attraction for him, because he’s going to need someone to replace Pacquiao when he retires for good. There isn’t anyone in Arum’s stable that can become a PPV by right now.