Crawford-Spence No later Than Oct 2019, Please!
By Ralph Rimpell
PhilBoxing.com
Wed, 04 Jul 2018
Newly crowned WBO welterweight champion, former unified jr. welterweight champion, and former lightweight champion Terence ?Bud? Crawford (33-0, 24KOs) recently said, ?Their can only be one King? in reference to a fight with IBF welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr. (24-0,21KOs).
However, neither fighter seems in a hurry to fight one another.
A big factor will be the politics. Both fighters have different Promoters and fight on competing television networks.
Crawford has also said the prospect of him fighting Spence can ?marinate? for a while. Spence has his sights on the winner of Porter-Garcia who fight for the vacant WBC 147lbs strap and then possibly WBA champ Keith Thurmond who is recovering from surgery. Potential opponents for Crawford are Lucas Matthysse, Pacquiao, Amir Kahn, etc.
There is nothing wrong with the path both fighters are taking provided they win and also are impressive doing so. They will actually be promoting their selves with victories and continue arousing the boxing public?s interest. Who knows? Maybe the ?Mainstream? fans (those who are interested in baseball, football, hockey, and basketball) will want to see Crawford-Spence if and when it actually happens. That will translate into millions of revenue in Pay Per view dollars (PPV).
Not since fighters such as Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, and arguably Lennox Lewis has an African American or Afro-British Boxer crossed over to ?Mainstream? status. Crawford and Spence are capable of reaching such heights, which is generally reached by Latin fighters.
The quality of the event will play a major factor as boxing continues to make a ?comeback? in the eyes of the ?Mainstream?. I as a boxing fan think back to Leonard-Hearns II, and Leonard-Duran III. Those fights reportedly did well financially but they also happened way too late. I also think of Holyfield-Tyson which was signed before Tyson was incarcerated for a rape conviction. Tyson was nowhere near the fighter he was prior to going off to prison for 3 years. If Tyson had not been sent to prison and had trained with his original trainer, Kevin Rooney, would the outcome of the fight against Holyfield been different?
All the aforementioned fights mentioned would their outcome have been any different had they taken place earlier? Maybe, maybe not. That brings us back to Crawford-Spence. How long are we going to have to wait for this fight? We have two undefeated fighters in their primes. Is this fight going to happen 3 years from now when one or both fighters begin to decline physically and each or one has a loss or two on their record?
This fight has to happen sooner than later. It will be good for boxing and all involved. Both fighters should take 1, but no more than 2 fights before they meet in unification match sometime between June 2019 and October 2019. This fight has to happen sometime in 2019 or else it will only be the fans that lose out on a great match.
Contact Writer: RLuvsboxing@aol.com
***Ralph Rimpell is a writer based out of New York and is a Boxing Correspondent for Philboxing.com. Ralph holds an undergraduate degree from City University of New York. He has been a Boxing Writer for over ten years having written for several top boxing websites on the World Wide Web. Before becoming a writer, Ralph's passion was for professional wrestling until he realized professional wrestling was entertainment and not a real sport. It was at that time the 1984 US Olympic team made up of future stars such as Evander Holyfield, Meldrick Taylor, Pernell Whitaker, etc. entered the professional ranks and signed with promotional outfit Main Events.It was also at that time a young exciting Heavyweight originally hailing from Brooklyn named Mike Tyson also turned professional and became the face of boxing. Young boxing fan Ralph just couldn't get enough of boxing as a large part of it was being broadcast on "free TV". As time went on, Ralph felt boxing writers were not being forthcoming with their boxing coverage, opinion pieces, interviews, etc. So Ralph decided to write an article and submitted it to a Boxing website thinking it would be deleted and ignored by the Editor. To Ralph's surprise his article was posted on their website and the readers embraced it. The rest is history.
"I thank God for the Internet because it has created opportunities for writers like myself who likely would not have been given an opportunity to write for print publications. I hope someday soon to expand my role in Boxing on different levels." -- Ralph Rimpell
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Ralph Rimpell.
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