Crawford’s trainer targeting Spence fight for late 2019

By Chris Williams

Boxingnews24.com

WBO welterweight champion Terence Crawford’s trainer Brian McIntyre is hoping that a unification match can be made against IBF welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr. by the end of 2019, as long as Terence takes care of business in his next title defense against Amir Khan on April 20. McIntyre has no doubts in his mind that Crawford (34-0, 25 KOs) is going to defeat Khan (33-4, 20 KOs) on April 20 on ESPN PPV.

McIntyre doesn’t promote Crawford. That job is held by Bob Arum of Top Rank, and he said on Tuesday that he’s not going to bother making a fight between Crawford and Spence until their fight brings in a guaranteed 500,000 PPV buys. That’s a crazy number, and it’s that it’ll never happen. Crawford’s only PPV fight of his career was against Viktor Postol in 2016, and they brought in just a little over 50,000 PPV buys. That was with Oscar Valdez on the undercard.

If Crawford’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank can offer Errol (24-0, 21 KOs) the same kind of money that he offered Khan to take the fight on April 20, then it’s possible that he might accept. The only problem is Spence fights for Premier Boxing Champions manager Al Haymon, and his fights are televised on FOX/FOX Deportes and SHOWTIME. If Spence agrees to fight Crawford, they would need to work out which network would televise the fight.

“They’re letting the fight build up. Errol keeps winning,a and Terence keeps winning, and hopefully at the end of the year, we can get that fight done,” Crawford’s trainer BoMac said to Fighthype. Errol’s a good fighter. Everybody is scared to fight him, but Terence.”

It would be surprising if the Spence vs. Crawford fight gets done this year. There are too many other fights out there for Spence, and you would have to expect that those fights would take place well before a fight against Crawford would happen. Spence is facing Mikey Garcia (39-0, 30 KOs) on March 16 on FOX PPV. There’s a possibility that Spence will face WBC champion Shawn Porter after that. WBA champion Keith Thurman is also someone that Spence could face. Danny Garcia has never shown any interest in fighting Spence, so he’s one of the handful of talented PBC welterweights that likely won’t face Spence. Once Spence is done fighting Porter and Thurman, a fight against Crawford could be a possibility. It would depend on his manager Al Haymon. If he wants to make that fight, he’ll reach out and look to put a deal together with Arum.

“When Terence knocks Amir Khan out, hopefully those other guys over there at PPC [Premier Boxing Champions], the other champions at welterweight [want to fight Crawford,” BoMac said. “They’ve seen the number Terence is doing with pay-per-view, and we’ll go from there. Hopefully these other guys [Errol Spence, Keith Thurman, Danny Garcia and Shawn Porter] will want that life changing money and get a crack against Terence Crawford, and roll the dice and see who gets the lottery pick and wants to fight Terence. You seen what he did in his last fight [against Jose Benavidez Jr.]. He did damn near 3 million views. That’s to watch the whole fight. We’re going to see good numbers from the pay-per-view when he fights Amir Khan. Once we get done with this fight, the top welterweights will say, ‘let me get a piece of that,’” BoMac said.

You hate to say it, but Crawford may have sealed his fate as far as him ever getting a fight against any of the PBC fighters other than Khan when he re-signed with Top Rank recently to extend his contract with them. By the time Crawford’s contract with Top Rank expires, he’s going to his mid-30s, and they’ll likely extend it again. That move on Crawford’s part is identical to what Tim Bradley was doing when he was with Top Rank, and he never got the fight that he wanted against Floyd Mayweather Jr., because he was on the wrong side of the tracks. Luckily for Bradley, he was able to get three fights against Manny Pacquiao, and a fight against Juan Manuel Marquez. Bradley made a lot of money in hsi fights against Pacquiao. Unfortunately for Crawford, Top Rank doesn’t have a Pacquiao for him to fight. They have no one other than Vasyl Lomachenko, who fights at lightweight, and who likely would never move up in weight to welterweight to fight Crawford.

BoMac is talking about Crawford’s opponent’s making “like-changing money,” but that may not be the reality. Khan is supposedly getting $3 million to $5 million for the fight, but it’s unclear whether that kind of money would be offered to Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter, Danny Garcia and Errol Spence Jr. to fight Crawford. If all Top Rank is talking about is $1 million or so, it’s doubtful that any of the PBC fighters are going to bother fighting Crawford. Why would they? Crawford has these things going against him when it comes to getting a fight against one of the PBC fighters:

– He’s counter puncher

– Moves a lot

– Switch hits [changes from orthodox to southpaw stance]

– Fights on ESPN

– Promoted by Top Rank

– Show boats frequently

– Not a big PPV fighter in the Saul Canelo Alvarez or Floyd Mayweather Jr. mode

Crawford has a lot going against him when it comes to him having a chance to fight the PBC fighters. If you look at all the negatives that come with fighting Crawford, he has very little chance of getting any of the PBC fighters to face him

McIntyre needs to hope that Crawford doesn’t lose to Khan, because there’s a real possibility he could get blitzed by him the same way he did to Phil Lo Greco. Khan has the fast hands, and he punches with the same kind of power that Crawford does. There’s not much difference between Crawford and Khan in terms of power. Crawford may have the better chin. It’s hard to say, because he’s faced so many mediocre fighters, and he’s not been hit by them. We did see Crawford get staggered by former welterweight champion Yuriorkis Gamboa in 2014, so that tells you that he doesn’t have the greatest chin in the world. If Gamboa could hurt Crawford, then Khan can do the same thing.