By Ryan Burton

Bob Arum was very pleased with WBO super lightweight champion Terence Crawford's 5th round knockout of Hank Lundy on Saturday night in New York.  After the fight the Top Rank chairman Bob Arum revealed that former champion Ruslan Provodnikov (25-4, 18KOs) was a leading contender to face Crawford (28-0, 20KOs) in his next bout.

Arum said that he would like for Crawford's next fight to headline at The Forum in Inglewood, California in either June or July.

BoxingScene.com caught up with Provodnikov's manager Vadim Kornilov to get his take on the potential fight.  Provodnikov has previously faced Top Rank fighter's Tim Bradley and Mike Alvarado.  Bradley went life and death with Provodnikov, winning a close decision in the 2013 Fight of the Year while the Russian stopped Alvarado in his hometown of Denver, Colorado. 

After those two fights Top Rank hasn't been too keen on putting their boxers in with the fighter known as Siberian Rocky even though he had asked to face former champions Brandon Rios, Jessie Vargas and also Bradley in a rematch.

"We are open to fighting anybody," said Kornilov who isn't going to hold his breath on a Crawford fight actually coming to fruition.
"It is finding somebody that actually wants to fight Ruslan that has been the problem.  Most people will say they do (want to fight him) until it gets around to time to sign a contract and then nothing happens."

Kornilov said that they have no problem with Arum's proposed venue and time frame. He also said that they are open to taking a tune up first or just going straight to a Crawford bout.

"We can be open to both situations.  We just need to get the conversation started," Kornilov told BoxingScene.com while also mentioning that his fighter actually attracts more viewers on HBO.

"The 982,000 viewers on the Crawford-Lundy fight shows what kind of a big star he is.  The fans know what the fighter is about, judging by the opposition he is facing.  Ruslan fights anybody and he is not being protected, fighting (lower level) opponents like some of the other fighters. That's why people don't care much even when he loses. Provodnikov has averaged 1.1-1.2 million in ratings in all of his hbo fights. So I don't see why Crawford, who for now is just getting PR from mentioning the name of a higher rated fighter (Provodnikov) on the network, gets to decide when and where he wants to fight Ruslan.  First, I would like to see Crawford sign a contract for the fight and then we can we can talk.  Usually the fighter wants the fights and Cameron Dunkin later says he doesn't want his fighters to fight Ruslan. We have gone through that with Rios, Vargas, and Bradley when he was with Dunkin, and I think Crawford might play a similar game."

Send questions or comments to ringsidewriter@gmail.com. You can follow Ryan on Twitter @ringsidewriter