Arum targets fall return for Terence Crawford

Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is currently holding an Oct. 13 date that the CenturyLink Center in Omaha, Nebraska for Terence Crawford’s next outing. Crawford is most recently coming off of a dominant performance over Jeff Horn to take the WBO welterweight title.

But should that date not work out, there is still the possibility that Crawford instead fights in November or December elsewhere. As of now Arum suggests Jose Benavidez Jr. could be a potential opponent, or perhaps — dun dun dunnn — Lucas Matthysse.

Matthysse’s currently scheduled fight against Manny Pacquiao in Malaysia appears to be in danger of falling apart as Pacquiao’s MP Promotions company (who is handling the fight) has already missed several significant deadlines to finance the bout.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen with the fight, but if it doesn’t happen, I would hope to talk to Golden Boy about having Matthysse fight Crawford,” Arum said.

Matthysse’s camp has received an initial $500,000 payment once the fight was contracted but the remaining funds owed to him — reportedly $2M — is over a month late to be deposited into an escrow account until after the fight goes down. Additionally, MP promotions has reportedly failed to make deposit deadlines to cover production costs.

Arum says that if Pacquiao-Matthysse comes off it would air on either ESPN or ESPN+, but that a television deal would still need to be finalized to make the fight.