Terence Crawford’s bout against Amir Khan was the most noteworthy but not the most important.
The most important fight was on Fox as Danny Garcia faced off against Adrian Granados. On paper, that makes no sense. Crawford was fighting on ESPN PPV against a well known opponent who has quality wins. Garcia fought a fighter that most casual fans don’t know. But this is boxing, none of it makes sense.
In the era of streaming services competing against pay-per-view, making fights has become even more difficult. It’s why the fans will be robbed of a Deontay Wilder-Tyson Fury rematch. Once Fury signed with Top Rank, the chances are a rematch died. Top Rank boss, Bob Arum, will want Premier Boxing Champions boxer, Wilder to sign for the fight to be part of an ESPN ppv card even though PBC has a deal with Showtime and their PPV wing.
With boxing factions not being able to work together, boxers need to understand how many big paydays they have in their weight class within their promotion company.
That’s why Garcia was the big winner on Saturday. Garcia knows PBC is stacked with possibilities. He has already asked for a fight with Manny Pacquiao but he could also seek a rematch with Shawn Porter or Keith Thurman. All three are sizable paydays for him. As Yahoo! Sports, Kevin Iole points out, PBC has a lot of options with it’s stable.
Haymon’s PBC has most of the best welterweights under contract and there are rumors that Spence may look to unify the WBC belt with Shawn Porter in the summer, and that Pacquiao, now with the PBC, may face Keith Thurman in a battle of WBA champions.
Unlike PBC’s welterweight stable, Crawford is behind the 8-ball because there are no credible Top Rank opponents left for him. Meanwhile, Bob Arum is over at Top Rank begging for a 50-50 split along with a co-promotion agreement to have Crawford fight Errol Spence Jr. There’s no motivation for PBC to grant Arum’s wishes. Spence-Crawford can be, and probably will be, made once Arum accepts the fact that PBC controls the parameters of any deal struck.
If Arum and PBC boss, Al Haymon, want to make a ton of money, they’ll figure this out. HBO and Showtime found a way to make Mike Tyson-Lennox Lewis and Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Manny Pacquiao. In both cases, it took time but it happened.
One can only hope cooler heads can prevail.
“You would agree the Wilder-Fury fight was very successful and people liked it and wanted to see it again, right? Well, the rematch was a week away from being made, and guess what? Bob Arum and Top Rank came in and signed Fury and ended the rematch. I think Bob has done everything he can possibly do to [expletive] this up.” – Leonard Ellerbe
Or maybe not.
