By Victor Salazar
New York - Although Top Rank's CEO Bob Arum is one of the greatest promoters of all time, sometimes he needs help with making fights.
So when it came down for Amir Khan (33-4, 20 KO’s) to decide what fight he wanted next between Terence Crawford (34-0, 25 KO’S) and Kell Brook, he phoned a friend and manager Billy Keane.
With Keane’s help, Arum was able to make the fight between Crawford and Khan which takes place on April 20th on the ESPN platform.
Arum admits Keane was essential.
“I always been an Amir Khan fan and I thought it would be a tremendous test for Crawford,” Arum told BoxingScene. “I was not very successful in closing the deal. Billy Keane spent two weeks with Amir Khan. We negotiated everything with Billy and got the deal done.”
In this fight, Arum is working with Matchroom Sport and Eddie Hearn. Arum has worked with other promoters in 2018 since he landed the ESPN television deal. Arum says he’s willing to work with anybody.
“I’m the old school and I make fights with everyone,” stated Arum.
“We just made Miguel Berchelt and we reached out to Oscar [De La Hoya] and made the fight with Francisco Vargas. It was a great fight and Oscar agreed to give us Vargas for Berchelt. If Vargas wins the fight, he goes back a champion. We did that with Gvozdyk and Stevenson. There was more money in Canada and they won the purse bid and my fighter went and came back a champion.”
Should Crawford win the fight, many pundits hope that he fights one of the many PBC fighters in the welterweight division. Arum says the decision is not his but their manager/advisor Al Haymon.
“Oscar knows how to do business and so does Eddie Hearn. There isn’t one way to do business. There needs to be a reason for everyone to come together and make a fight. Haymon is doing a disservice with his welterweights by bottling them up and having them fight their own stable. That makes no sense we learned that 30-40 years ago," Arum said.
