Crawford-Khan conference call notes

Tuesday began the press rollout for fighters Terrence “Bud” Crawford and Amir “King” Khan for their pay-per-view fight on April 20th at Madison Square Garden. The first boxing pay-per-view between ESPN and Top Rank Boxing, while didn’t lay out the price of it as of yet, did have the boxers, Crawford’s trainer Brian McIntyre and Top Rank Rank Promoter Bob Arum on hand for a conference call and here are some of the quotes that came out from it leading up to the upcoming fight.

When asked if Bob Arum writes his own tweets chimed in with on the call:

“People think I don’t know how to work Twitter? We all know how to work Twitter. The President of the United States uses Twitter. Yes, I work Twitter, and I think it’s a great service. You can say a lot of things on Twitter, and fans read them and respond. Sometimes they like them and sometimes they don’t like them and sometimes they say the most horrible things in response to them. I think it is a lot of fun and it is the modern way to educate fans and to reach fans, so yes, I am a big Twitterer myself and I do three or four tweets a week, so yeah, I plead guilty to writing my own tweets.”

Amir Khan stated on what he’s been doing to train for Crawford:

“We have been bringing in different guys in sparring. Some of the guys are southpaw and some are orthodox. I am not leaving anything behind. I am working with four guys. If he wants to fight me {as a southpaw}, then so be it. We are ready for anything he brings to the table. We are not leaving anything behind on this. I am not going to go into the fight and say, ‘wow, I didn’t expect this.’ I have been learning a little bit from each of my training partners.”

Kahn also asked how much the location made him choose this fight over the one proposed with Kell Brook:

“New York is where my wife is from. I have a big fan base there. I enjoy walking the streets of New York and getting loved by the boxing fans. I love the place and have been spending a lot of time there. Also, MSG is the Mecca of Boxing and all of the great boxers that have fought there back to the beginning – I want to be amongst them. One day when I am walking the streets with my kids and I’ll be walking past it and say, ‘Look, I fought there.’ It means a lot to me. New York is a place I will always be attached to.”

When Crawford was asked how he prepares for Khan while being the favorite in the fight?

“I am never going to be complacent. I know about the threats that he brings into the ring and the troubles that I can have if I overlook Amir Khan. He’s got everything to gain so we have to take this fight real serious because the fights that slip out of a fighters’ hands happen when they think the fight is in the bag and it didn’t even start yet. We are going into the fight 110 percent focused and ready for the best Amir Khan come fight night.”

When asked if the Spence fight happen, he mentioned the following:

“Of course it is makeable. I believe it would be the biggest fight in the welterweight division. But like you said, I have this fight against Amir Khan. After the fight, we can talk about Errol Spence and Al Haymon and Top Rank doing business together. But right now, I am not even thinking or worried about Errol Spence.”

When asked about Kahn and the troubles he could cause he stated:

“He is a big welterweight. He has a big name in the sport of boxing. Right now, I give him a shot at the title. He has done some great things in the welterweight division. He has never lost at the welterweight division. We look at all of those types of things.”

When asked about the common opponent Breidis Prescott, Crawford’s trainer Brian McIntyre was asked what he took away from the fights each fighter had him:

“I don’t take that into consideration at all because that was a different fight and that was a while ago and Amir has bounced back with some great wins. When Terence fought him, he wasn’t the best junior welterweight at the time. When Amir fought him, he was alright. They were two totally different fighters and Prescott did a totally different fight against Amir Khan than he did against Terence.”