The struggle remains in the quest to secure the best welterweights in the world for arguably the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world.
That will never prevent Top Rank from continuing to promoter Terence Crawford as if he’s the biggest star in the world.
Ahead of his upcoming title defense versus former champ Kell Brook (39-2, 27KOs), Top Rank and ESPN have begun rolling out shoulder programming for Omaha’s Crawford. Fight week officially kicked off with ‘Terence Crawford: Relentless’, a 30-minute special which debuted this past Sunday.
During the segment, the unbeaten three-division champ sits down with former two-division champ and current ESPN expert analyst Andre Ward to discuss a variety of topics. Among them include his current standing in the sport and the prospects of his one day heading into the Hall of Fame, while focusing on his tight-knit family life and time spent with Top Rank dating back to 2011.
“It’s important for the content to be out there,” Crawford (36-0, 27KOs) told BoxingScene.com during a recent Zoom conference call of his participation in the series. “I felt like it always should, whether it’s a Pay-Per-View or not.
“I consider this a big fight for boxing fans.”
The same mindset is carried by his promoter, who along with broadcasting partner ESPN have invested heavily into this weekend’s card. The show takes place Saturday evening, live from The Bubble at MGM Grand in Las Vegas, with ESPN to air in lieu of taking his services to Pay-Per-View.
On the promotional front, the approach is similar to Top Rank’s buildup to the World lightweight championship between Teofimo Lopez (16-0, 12KOs) and Vasiliy Lomachenko (14-2, 10KOs) from the same venue just four weeks ago. The concept: go in with the PPV feel, without such cost to the consumer.
“This is obviously one of our priorities,” Todd duBoef, president of Top Rank told BoxingScene.com. “Constantly keeping it going, keeping the awareness going and making Terence Crawford as mainstream as possible. We can all talk in the boxing world about how great he is. We all live in, sometimes it’s this little [boxing] world. It’s our job as his promoter to make him as big as possible.
“When we bring him to the biggest platforms and biggest network and he shines in those fights and they do big numbers, it’s terrific. We have Relentless (for this fight). We had “Blood, Sweat and Tears” (for Lopez-Lomachenko). We produce those shows in-house. Andre and Terence have a really good interaction. We saw that back in December when they sat down for a talk (on air). So we did it again for ‘Relentless’. They feed off of each other really well and you get the best out of Terence there.”
The segment was well-received by viewers, although the pre-fight coverage will continue in the days ahead leading up to Crawford’s fourth defense of his 147-pound title and 15th consecutive title fight spanning three weight divisions over nearly seven years.
“We’re gonna have real-time (content) going on this week, doing everything in house and content circulated everywhere to drive awareness,” reveals duBoef. “This is what our job is.
“It’s Terence’s job to come off the way he is, to show people the night before and then in the ring who he is and what makes him so special.”
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox