Bob Arum still pushing for Crawford-Spence matchup
Top Rank promoter Bob Arum has been on a mission to make the megafight between Terence Crawford and Errol Spence that many fans and boxing media want to see.
Arum in a recent interview with Ring Magazine hammered that point that as he did not catch Spence in action against Shawn Porter this past weekend on pay-per-view.
“It was just a fight, and people have so many entertainment options, football games and so forth, and people were not gonna spend money on a fight that maybe was gonna be good,” Arum said to The Ring. “It was a 10-to-1 fight, and I guess it turned out to be competitive, but Porter is not an elite guy.”
Bob Arum appeals to Al Haymon for Spence-Crawford ASAP @woodsy1069 @trboxing @errolspenceJr @terencecrawford @premierboxing https://t.co/3SBwlZ2tLr
— Bible of Boxing (@ringmagazine) September 30, 2019
While that quote from Arum may sound dismissive of the card, the fight ended up becoming for most a Fight of the Year Contender. On paper for a $69.95 price tag during football season, you can see where the longtime promoter is coming from in that stance. While Arum wasn’t paying up, Mike Coppinger of The Athletic reported that around three hundred thousand others and counting did for the fight card Saturday night.
Sources: The PBC on FOX PPV headlined by Errol Spence Jr. and Shawn Porter is tracking over 300,000 buys, with the final number generated expected to land under 350K. Strong business that cements Spence as a PPV attraction. His PPV with Mikey Garcia generated over 300K also
— Mike Coppinger (@MikeCoppinger) September 30, 2019
For Arum, it’s all about making the matchup between arguably the best two welterweights in the division in Spence and Crawford. This plea has been a sticking point Arum has been lobbying for a while and said to my face directly back in May.
“I’m still optimistic we can still get a fight done with Spence,” Arum said back in May to the media following the Herring-Ito weigh-in. “That’s the fight that people want to see.”
Of course, we’ll all have to wait on this to happen as Spence has made it known that Crawford isn’t on his radar right now. Spence is slated to take on Danny Garcia in early 2020 while Crawford is set to face the WBO number one contender Egidijus “Mean Machine” Kavaliauskas in December.
Tim Smith, Spokesperson for Premier Boxing Champions who manages Spence offered to The RIng a great counterpoint to why this Crawford-Spence matchup isn’t happening.
“Can you please ask Arum what he would do if the roles were reversed?,” Smith said to The Ring “What would he do if he had Spence, Garcia, Porter, Thurman, Pacquiao and the PBC only had Crawford? As a businessman, would he be running to make a fight with PBC in that situation? If he says he would do it in the interest of the fans, then ask him why he decided to not go with an immediate rematch between Fury and Wilder, which to me was in the best interest of the fans and it would have been very profitable?”
It takes two to tango, and these two sides aren’t on the dance floor for this fight, no matter if it’s everyone’s favorite song.
Marquis Johns is a unknown humorist and avid boxing fan. His love for the sweet science goes back to when matches were 15 rounds and has been covering fights since closed-circuit pay-per-views. Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth is not only a quote by Mike Tyson, it's also a pretty good reminder to keep your guard up.
