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Top Rank’s CEO Bob Arum, who promotes WBO welterweight champion Terence Crawford, is going to explore two potential opponents for his fighter.
Former champions Manny Pacquiao and Shawn Porter are the names being mentioned by Arum, who wants to secure one of them for Crawford’s next fight.
Pacquiao, 42-years-old, has been out of the ring since July 2019 – when he picked up a twelve round split decision win over Keith Thurman at MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The victory gave Pacquiao the WBA welterweight title, but he was recently removed from that position due to inactivity.
As BoxingScene.com previously reported, Crawford would prefer a fight with Pacquiao but he’s also interested in Porter.
The last time Porter saw action was back in August, when he picked up a one-sided twelve round decision over Sebastian Formella.
“[Shawn’s father and trainer Kenny Porter] came to our office two weeks ago to talk about a Crawford – Porter fight, and then out of nowhere the idea of a tremendous site fee, a possibility of doing Pacquiao-Crawford came up. Obviously, it’s more money for Terence. Terence would prefer a Pacquiao fight than anyone else,” Arum told Barbershop Conversations.
“Yeah, we’re going to see what happens, and we’ll know this week whether Pacquiao-Crawford can happen. If it doesn’t happen, since [Errol] Spence clearly doesn’t want to fight Crawford, I think Crawford-Porter would be a tremendous fight.”
Crawford was in the ring last November, when he knocked out former champion Kell Brook in four rounds.
One of the biggest fights in the sport is a unification between Crawford and WBC, IBF world champion Errol Spence.
But Arum is not convinced that Spence actually wants that fight.
“Crawford wants to fight Spence, but Spence has said loud and clear he doesn’t want to fight Crawford,” Arum said.