Terence Crawford says he wants to fight in 2020, but he’s not sure who his promoters at Top Rank can get for him under the circumstances with the pandemic. The WBO welterweight champion Crawford (36-0, 27 KOs) states that he had hopes of fighting Manny Pacquiao, but the world situation with the virus has interrupted those plans.
Top Rank would need to come up with the money to try and entice the PBC welterweights to want to fight Crawford this year. But how are they going to do that without a live gate? Crawford wants to be paid the same kind of money that he was getting before the pandemic, which further complicates things for Top Rank.
If they’re expected to pay Crawford his going rate for his fights, then it significantly limits what they can do in terms of finding quality opposition for him. Crawford will be turning 33 in September, and his career is melting away. He still doesn’t have a signature fight on his resume, and he can only hope that maybe something will come his way in 2021 or 2022.
The money isn’t there for a fight between Terence and 41-year-old Pacquiao. It’s a fight that needs a live gate, and you’re not going to find that in the U.S in 2020.
Rated the pound-for-pound rankings highly, that’s not helping Crawford get a fight. Top Rank has very few welterweights for Crawford to fight, and he doesn’t have the option to pick who he wants to fight from the Premier Boxing Champions welterweights.
In an interview this week, ESPN commentator Max Kellerman rattled off four potential opponents for Crawford’s next fight in naming these fighters: Yordenis Ugas, Shawn Porter, Kell Brook, and Manny Pacquiao. Of those names, Pacquiao, Porter, and Ugas are all with PBC. In other words, Crawford’s promoters at Top Rank can’t automatically make a fight against any of them.
Additionally, Crawford’s chances of fighting these PBC guys are low as well: Sergey Lipinets, Mikey Garcia, Danny Garcia, Errol Spence Jr, and Jamal James.
“Manny Pacquiao is the fight we’re still currently looking forward to getting, but the pandemic has messed up a lot of things as far as money issues and whatnot, fans not being able to actually come and see the fight,” Crawford said to Max Kellerman of ESPN.
If Crawford is going to look at the Pacquiao fight, he’ll need to shift his time frame to 2021 because it’s not happening this year. With no gate, Pacquiao won’t want to fight Crawford.
So if you take all the above fighters from the equation for Crawford’s next fight, it leaves the regular no-name guys that he’s been fighting much of his career.
These are Crawford’s best bets:
- Mikka Shonena
- Custio Calyton
- Mikael Zewski
- Michael McKinson
- Luther Clay
- Jaron Ennis
- Yuki Beppu
- Nursultan Zhangabayev
- Bowyn Morgan
- Ivan Golub
- Sebastian Formella
- Keita Obara
The name of that bunch is Jaron Ennis, who is interested in fighting Crawford. That would be a hard fight for Terence, and he might lose. Other than that, the rest of the fighters in the last are about as well-known as Crawford’s last opponent Egidijus Kavaliauskas.
Is it worth it for Crawford to fight any of those obscure fighters? If Terence is just interested in the pay-check he’ll get for fighting one of them; then he might not care too much.
“I really don’t know how (the situation will play out for a fight) against any top welterweight in the division,” said Crawford.
“When you look at the landscape, the whole thing is gonna come down to money, and if you can’t provide the proper money for each fighter, how can you make a fight happen?”
