Terence Crawford and Errol Spence Jr. keep calling each other out, but it doesn’t appear the next big super fight in the sport can be made unless the commas are correct.
According to the Nebraska native Crawford, it’s all about the Benjamins in order for a welterweight unification bout to take place.
“If it makes sense, then a fight can get made. There are no hurdles. It’s all about money at the end of the day. If there is enough money on the table, then a fight is going to get made. If there are two promotional companies coming together, we all gotta eat,” said Crawford. “Sometimes there isn’t enough money to break down for everybody. It takes a lot of money to put on a show. There’s a lot of money that goes into making fights, and a lot of people don’t understand that. It’s not about two people saying ‘we want to fight.’”
Crawford (36-0, 27 KOs), the WBO welterweight champion, and Spence (26-0, 21 KOs), the WBC and IBF welterweight champion, will need to fight each other at some point before the primes of their careers are over to settle the debate of who the best 147 pound fighter was of their era.
The 32-year-old Crawford feels that the 30-year-old Dallas-based Spence will be kept away from him for a while, even though his promoter Bob Arum believes a fight can be made with Al Haymon as soon as Spence has a full green light on his health.
“When [PBC] has a lot of fighter’s they can pick and choose from [for Spence] they can keep it in house. Top Rank did the same thing. [It’s not bad for boxing.] It’s smart,” said Crawford. “You don’t see Crawford-Spence, but you see Danny Garcia versus Keith Thurman, and Shawn Porter versus Errol Spence. Those are great fights too, but it’s not the one fight y’all want to see. One fight does not take away from all of the great fights that are happening in this past year.
“Of course I want to fight all of the guys, but it’s a business. If you are one of the best welterweights in the world, you’re not going to take any less than what you deserve just to get in the ring to fight somebody you feel that you’re better than.”
Manouk Akopyan is a sports journalist and member of the Boxing Writers Assn. of America since 2011. He has written for the likes of the LA Times, Guardian, USA Today, Philadelphia Inquirer, Men’s Health and NFL.com and currently does TV commentary for combat sports programming that airs on Fox Sports and hosts his own radio show in Los Angeles. He can be reached on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube at @ManoukAkopyan or via email at manouk[dot]akopyan[at]gmail.com.