LAS VEGAS – Bob Arum likes Shawn Porter personally.
The outspoken promoter just doesn’t think the WBC welterweight champion has much of a chance to upset Errol Spence Jr. on September 28. Arum even expects Spence to become the first opponent to stop Porter inside the distance.
“Porter is very limited,” Arum told BoxingScene.com. “He’s a nice kid, a really lovely kid. He’s like a bulldog. You know, he comes in, but he doesn’t have real skills. Spence has got skills.”
Arum envisions Porter attempting to make Spence uncomfortable with his physicality. Those tactics won’t work, according to Arum.
“He will rough him up,” Arum said, “but Spence probably knocks him out.”
The 31-year-old Porter (30-2-1, 17 KOs) has lost only on points since he turned pro in October 2008.
The Akron, Ohio, native dropped a majority decision to Kell Brook, who was undefeated when he won the IBF 147-pound championship from Porter in August 2014 at StubHub Center in Carson, California. In June 2016, Keith Thurman, also undefeated at that time, topped Porter by unanimous decision in a closely contested 12-rounder for Thurman’s WBA welterweight title at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
The 29-year-old Spence (25-0, 21 KOs), of DeSoto, Texas, has knocked out 84 percent of his professional opponents. The IBF welterweight champion is commonly listed as a 10-1 favorite to defeat Porter.
If Spence wins their FOX Sports Pay-Per-View main event at Staples Center in Los Angeles, Arum is more optimistic than he was earlier this year about making a Spence-Terence Crawford fight. Arum, whose company promotes Crawford, left a face-to-face meeting this summer with Al Haymon, Spence’s adviser, encouraged that they could make that welterweight showdown at some point in 2020.
“I had preliminary talks with Al about it,” Arum said. “That’s the fight that people wanna see. That’s the only fight that’s gonna really resonate on pay-per-view.”
Crawford, who’ll turn 32 the day of the Spence-Porter fight, is expected to make a mandatory defense of his WBO 147-pound crown versus Egidijus Kavaliauskas in his next fight.The bout between Crawford (35-0, 26 KOs), of Omaha, Nebraska, and Lithuania’s Kavaliauskas (21-0-1, 17 KOs) will headline a December 14 card at Madison Square Garden.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
