Arum: Crawford-Porter will happen if the fighters want it
The Top Rank promoter says he’ll get a deal done if his guy Terence Crawford and Shawn Porter say they want to fight.
Top Rank’s Bob Arum had a good Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, as he saw lightweight Teofimo Lopez take another leap toward true stardom, followed by welterweight titleholder Terence Crawford retaining his WBO strap again with a stoppage of Egidijus Kavaliauskas.
Arum was, as you’d guess, happy with Crawford’s win, and the legendary promoter is starting to look ahead to 2020.
“Terence is special. He showed tonight that he’s special,” Arum said. “I say he would do similar things to any welterweight in the world. And I’m really anxious as the year goes on next year, with these junior welterweights coming up, like (Jose) Ramirez and Josh Taylor and (Regis) Prograis — they’ll give him good fights, but I don’t think anybody will beat Terence.”
A lot of the talk right now is about Crawford (36-0, 27 KO) possibly facing PBC’s Shawn Porter (30-3-1, 17 KO), who is coming off of a loss to Errol Spence Jr in September, but would make for Crawford’s best opponent at 147 pounds by a good bit, and frankly probably the best of Crawford’s career by the same good bit.
“That’s up to Porter and Crawford,” Arum said. “If they wanna fight each other, we’ll get it done.”
For what it’s worth, Crawford said something similar at his post-fight presser, agreeing that the deal will come through if he and Porter agree to fight:
“It’s not going to be Bob Arum or PBC, Al Haymon, that’s not going to be up to them,” Crawford stated. “It’s going to be up to us, if we agree to fight. Right now, we haven’t had a discussion on whether or not there will be a fight, me and Shawn.
“Right now, I’m not even thinking about that fight, I’m not worried about that fight. That fight is not even in my head right now. But all those other guys? They know what it is.”