By Keith Idec
Bob Arum has a tremendous amount of confidence in Terence Crawford.
That confidence, combined with the hype-prone promoter’s need to sell an event scheduled for Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, led Arum to make quite a prediction regarding the remainder of Crawford’s career. Asked about the importance of Crawford headlining at the Garden’s main arena for the first time, Arum suggested that the unbeaten WBC/WBO super lightweight champion could become the best fighter of his era.
“Well obviously, fighting in the big arena, as the main event, makes a statement,” Arum said during a recent conference call. “And it’s what our plans are. Our plans are that Terence Crawford, before he hangs up his gloves, will be recognized as the greatest fighter of his time. That’s gonna be up to Terence, but he has the tools and the personality and the ability to reach that goal.
“And our job as a promoter is to see that he has every opportunity to show the world that he is the best fighter of his era. And fighting on the big stage at Madison Square Garden, where Muhammad Ali fought, where Marvin Hagler fought, where Oscar De La Hoya fought, and now where Terence Crawford is fighting, is a step in that direction.”
The 29-year-old Crawford (30-0, 21 KOs) has established himself as one of sport’s top 10 fighters, pound-for-pound, in the world. The Omaha, Nebraska, native has won world titles in two weight classes over the past three years and has recorded impressive victories over former champions Ricky Burns, Yuriorkis Gamboa and Viktor Postol along the way.
He still would need to consistently conquer higher-profile opponents, probably by moving up to the welterweight division, to have any chance at making Arum’s prediction come true. Crawford will defend his 140-pound titles Saturday night against the Dominican Republic’s Felix Diaz (19-1, 9 KOs) in an HBO “World Championship Boxing” main event.
“Obviously we could’ve taken the fight to Omaha and had a massive sellout, like we always do,” Arum said, referring to Crawford’s three appearances at CenturyLink Center in downtown Omaha. “But we decided that we wanted to showcase Terence in ‘The Mecca of Boxing,’ Madison Square Garden. We’re gonna have a tremendous crowd. Tickets are going extremely well. We’ve dressed up the card with really great young fighters, like Shakur Stevenson, like [Fazliddin Gaibnazarov], the Olympic gold medalist from Rio, who comes from Uzbekistan, Teofimo Lopez, our rising star in the sport.
“And it all will come down to the main event, which will feature Terence Crawford, and it will be a statement that he will make on his quest to become the best fighter of our era, of this era. Simple as that. There’s no place else in boxing, with all due respect to Las Vegas and other arenas – there’s no place in boxing that has the symbolism and the history of Madison Square Garden. And now Terence will have the opportunity to perform on the biggest of all stages, ‘The Mecca of Boxing.’ ”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.