Top Rank’s Arum On Crawford-Pacquiao- “It Was Set To Take Place”

For the first time in 2020, WBO Welterweight Champ Terence Crawford made a title defense and was as impressive, as always, in a 4th round TKO win over England’s Kell Brook. And, once that was finished, the questions came fast and furious about whether he will get a huge night to fight him in his next bout.

Of course, as we wrote Saturday, there is obviously some discontent from the 33 year old unbeaten champ, with the fact that a battle with with Unified Welterweight Champ, Errol Spence or WBA World Champ, Manny Pacquiao, hasn’t materialized for the last 18 months. So much so, that Crawford had his lawyer write a letter to Arum about the disappointment with opponent options.

As for Crawford’s comments after the win, when asked by ESPN’s Benardo Osuna immediately after about who he wanted next, he looked with a smirk on his face to Arum next to him to answer. And, the 88 year old Top Rank promoter made it clear that they had a deal earlier in the Fall to have a huge PPV fight with Pacquiao,

“The money was there. It had been committed. It was a fight that was going to take place in a country in the Mid-East (reportedly Qatar). And then the Minister of Health in that country said ‘you can’t do it,’ because I can’t guarantee that we’ll allow spectators (due to Covid 19 increasing worldwide).

And, it would’ve been this week. So, he was right.

Now, they’ve called us and said, if Terence is successful, we want to resume the talks in the Spring, either before or after Ramadan (Muslim holy holidays).”

Pacquiao reportedly had agreed to the outrageous guarantee of $23.5 million and you would believe that Crawford would have gotten a guarantee of at least 2/3 of that. Thus, the highest payday of his career.

For his part, Crawford later said about fighting the future Hall of Famer, Pacquiao,

“I already said who I want {next}. I want Pacquiao,” Crawford said. “I want to revisit that fight. That was a fight that should’ve happened right now. But being that the pandemic happened, and they weren’t going to allow fans in the Middle East, they had to put a hold to that. Everything was 95 percent done. We had a venue. The money was almost there. It wasn’t quite there. That was the only thing we were waiting on.”

And, obviously, that’s the kind of fight that Crawford has been craving, since signing on with a multi-year deal with Top Rank four years ago. However, he has been stymied by the fact that Premier Boxing Champions now controls Pacquiao, Spence, and former champs Keith Thurman and Shawn Porter, etc.

And, PBC has had no interest in doing Welterweight deals with Arum/Top Rank.

So, if the Pacquiao deal fell through financially due to no fans being allowed, then what kind of chance is there for a Crawford-Spence battle, should Spence emerge victorious over Danny Garcia on December 5th?

Back to Arum immediately after Saturday night’s win, he didn’t sound optimistic about a Spence fight being made,

“Lemme tell ya something, and I mean this, Spence and Garcia are fighting December 5. If they really want to make a big PPV, I’ll put Terence Crawford in with both of them, one at a time. And, he’d beat both of them the same night.

He is far and away the best Welterweight in the world. He goes back to the great Welterweights like Ray Leonard and Tommy Hearns. He would have been competitive with them.

The Welterweights around now are not competitive with Terence Crawford.

Errol Spence will try to avoid Terence Crawford, as long as he can, because he knows he can’t beat Terence Crawford. You saw the performance tonight. He’ll take out Errol Spence in about the same number of rounds like he took out Kell Brook.”

Again, that’s the promoter, who has egg on his face for not being able to make the Crawford-Spence fight, sounding off.

As for Crawford? He will likely loose patience soon, if no prominent deal can be made with Spence, Pacquiao or anyone else.