BoxRec

tiny_acres wrote: ↑30 Sep 2018, 20:01

Enlightened-One wrote: ↑30 Sep 2018, 19:48

IKSRTFO wrote: ↑30 Sep 2018, 17:15

I am aware. It's just not Spence place nor job to bring that up as an excuse to not fight arguably the #1 P4P. Outside of Floyd and Pacquiao, what top boxer bring that up as a reason not to fight the top boxer in their weightclass? It's not like Spence is Floyd Mayweather or Pacquiao.

Spence gave a weak excuse to duck, period.

Are you suggesting that Errol Spence Jr. possesses enough influence over TV networks like Fox, Showtime & ESPN, as well as important figures such as Bob Arum and Al Haymon, whereby all he needs to do is click his fingers and all those parties would be automatically compelled to adhere to his orders by staging a bout between himself and Terence Crawford?

Is that how you feel the sport of boxing works?

I'm not mocking you - instead I am merely curious.

EO it's no more asinine than the people thinking Wilder controls VADA or the WBC.
Or that Amir Khan is the PPV equal to Pacquia and can control negotiations.

But back to the topic. No Spence has near zero power in the sport. He controls nothing.
But his knocking of Crawford was one of 2 things either a blatant duck.
Or in my opinion a call out to frustrate Team Crawford and to generate interest in the future fight.
It is a fight that is 18-24 months away from being a blockbuster in my opinion.
And I doubt we see until then

Enlightened-One wrote: ↑01 Oct 2018, 04:16

tiny_acres wrote: ↑30 Sep 2018, 20:01

Enlightened-One wrote: ↑30 Sep 2018, 19:48
Are you suggesting that Errol Spence Jr. possesses enough influence over TV networks like Fox, Showtime & ESPN, as well as important figures such as Bob Arum and Al Haymon, whereby all he needs to do is click his fingers and all those parties would be automatically compelled to adhere to his orders by staging a bout between himself and Terence Crawford?

Is that how you feel the sport of boxing works?

I'm not mocking you - instead I am merely curious.

EO it's no more asinine than the people thinking Wilder controls VADA or the WBC.
Or that Amir Khan is the PPV equal to Pacquia and can control negotiations.

But back to the topic. No Spence has near zero power in the sport. He controls nothing.
But his knocking of Crawford was one of 2 things either a blatant duck.
Or in my opinion a call out to frustrate Team Crawford and to generate interest in the future fight.
It is a fight that is 18-24 months away from being a blockbuster in my opinion.
And I doubt we see until then

'IKSRTFO' was criticising Errol Spence Jr. for suggesting that Crawford is “just on the wrong side of the street” and that he may need to cross it in order to face himself and his fellow PBC stablemates.

However, he failed to realise that Terence Crawford pretty much said the very same thing:

“I just think business-wise it has to make sense,” Crawford said via ESPN.com. “Al isn’t going to send his fighters to ESPN if it doesn’t make sense, and Bob isn’t going to send me to Showtime if it doesn’t make sense. If the fight makes sense, the fight will happen.”

And even Bob Arum stated the following:

“A fight, maybe a year from now [2019], that everybody will want to see — it will be a big pay-per-view fight — is Terence and Spence,” Arum told RingTV.com. “It’ll be bigger in a year…”

“I would hope it’s 2019, we’d like to do it next year…”

“Eventually I think I’ll be able to make a Spence fight because the money will be so big and we’ll be reasonable, and we’ll share things and everything...”

A few months ago, Bob Arum stated the following:

“I would like Spence to do a fight on Showtime and a fight on ESPN and, in the fall of next year [2019], have them fight each other. I think that could be built at that point into a ‘major’ pay-per-view. Now I’m not crazy – what is a ‘major pay-per-view’? Anything over 500,000 (buys).”

Even Showtime’s Stephen Espinoza claimed that this fight has to be economically viable for everyone involved when he said the following:

“It would have to be worth the trouble and the opportunity,” Espinoza noted. “If it doesn’t make sense from the business perspective or an opportunity perspective, then you’re talking about jumping through a lot of hoops for very little payoff. So it really depends on the magnitude of the opportunity, which certainly now looks like a big one and will hopefully get bigger.”

Crawford-Spence isn’t big enough yet. There’s interest from boxing’s hardcore fraternity, but mainstream casuals probably aren’t too familiar with either fighter.

The problem is compounded when you consider that both Crawford and Spence Jr. lack charisma when being interviewed by the media, as well as their fighting styles being an acquired taste only appreciated by hard-core boxing aficionados. Mainstream fans rarely understand or appreciate their relatively patient approaches to wearing down their opponents’, because it’s not spectacular.

Nobody should be accusing Crawford or Spence Jr. of being “ducks” whilst discounting the existence of boxing politics, because it’s a real thing, unlike myths and legends, such as: Santa Claus, fairies, the afterlife, reincarnation, the Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot etc.