With recent news breaking that Terence Crawford will be taking on David Avanesyan in his next outing, and not Errol Spence, Matchroom promoter shares his perspective on why the fight didn’t come to pass.
“Sooner or later Crawford has to fight, he’s been out for a long time,” Hearn said. “It’s obviously disappointing for boxing. Crawford vs Avanesyan is a fight no one wants to see, but somehow he’s getting paid a lot of money. So good luck to him.
“I’ve been there before, trying to make big fights that haven’t been possible to make, and honestly they haven’t been my fault — maybe some — so there has to be a reason why (Spence vs Crawford) didn’t get made.
“I don’t know the reasons, sometimes the fighter’s expectancy of how much money they should make in a fight is not real life. And the problem with Spence vs Crawford is, and I said it for a long time — to us, to people in boxing, it’s a massive fight. But to the general world, it’s not as big as you think it is.
“So therefore, the money these guys want isn’t necessarily achievable. And if it was achievable, trust me, the fight would get made. Like if the numbers existed, the fight gets made because everyone makes money. The problem here is Crawford says ‘I want X,’ Spence says ‘I want X’ and the promoters, Al Haymon, look at the money and go ‘we can’t do this fight without losing money, and we’re not prepared to lose money.’
“In the instance of Crawford’s next fight, someone is gonna lose many, many millions, but maybe they don’t care, they’re not running a business.
“It’s a dangerous sport. Fighters should get as much money as they deserve. But you can’t take away from the reality of what a fighter generates. Terence Crawford has never done any PPV numbers. When he boxed Amir Khan, Top Rank hemorrhaged millions of dollars in that fight. And Errol Spence has never done any big PPV numbers, and when he did he had Mikey Garcia as a dance partner and still that only did 300,000 buys or whatever it is.
“So neither of them have proven, in terms of PPV draws. I believe that fight would do good numbers because it is a tremendous fight, but you can’t guarantee that fact unless you’re prepared — the only person that has to roll the dice is (the promoters). The fighters are rolling the dice because they have to get in there and fight, but in terms of their numbers, we roll the dice. And we’re big boys, sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. But there has to be a logical decision.
“When there’s so much money in a fight and the numbers are right on every side, fights get made (quickly), when two guys want it. But when the numbers are unrealistic and it’s too much doubt and risk, that’s when people will kick back on the smaller points.”