Manny Pacquiao joined Al Haymon’s brainchild Premier Boxing Champions this year with the purpose of fighting the very best the welterweight division has to offer.
Bob Arum, who promoted Pacman during the peak of his career, believes he still got the true king of the 147-pound weight class under his wing and claimed that PBC fighters are trying to avoid a confrontation with him as much as possible.
At 87-years-old, Arum remains an active figure in boxing. He also hasn’t lost a step when it comes to hyping his own fighter.
They don’t want Crawford
On Thursday, Fighthub had an exclusive interview with the Top-Rank boss during the press conference for the Sergey Kovalev vs.
Anthony Yarde fight. There, Arum discussed plenty of boxing-related topics, including the next fight for his high-profile client: WBO welterweight champion Terence Crawford.
Arum revealed that Crawford’s next fight will be staged at Madison Square Garden in New York against a still-unnamed opponent, before the end of the year.
When asked about a potential clash between Crawford and Al Haymon’s clients, Arum blatantly accused the other camp of ducking his fighter, stressing that everything they said about not ducking Crawford is BS.
“You know that BS. Oh man, it’s a load of cr*p. They are afraid to fight the guy. If they could go in with confidence, but one of their fighters beat Crawford, that would be a big blow to us, right?
They could really punish us by beating Crawford, but they can’t beat him so they won’t fight him. If they could beat him, of course, they would fight him,” Arum said in the FightHub video in response to PBC fighters’ claims they are not ducking Crawford.
Pacquiao vs Crawford
Even when Pacquiao was still with Top-Rank, Arum eagerly tried to arrange a fight between boxing’s only eight-division champion and the hard-hitting Crawford.
But according to reports coming from Pacman camp, they were not interested in taking the fight against Crawford, as they viewed the undefeated American a high-risk, low-reward opponent for Pacquiao at this point of his career.
Crawford shared the same sentiments during a recent interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
“I wouldn’t say so,” Crawford said on Joe Rogan’s YouTube podcast when asked if the fight with Pacquiao is possible.
“Because I was being mentioned to fight Pacquiao since 2014 and we were in the same promotional company, they couldn’t make it happen." He added, “I don’t think he was interested because his coach [Freddie Roach] mentioned numerous times he didn’t want him to fight me, and he wanted him to stay away from me.”
After becoming the undisputed champion in the 140-pound weight class, Crawford stepped into the welterweight division and made a big splash right away, beating the likes of Jeff Horn, Jose Benavidez Jr., and Amir Khan.
Crawford also admitted that he would like to test himself against the elites of the welterweight class, but the problem is almost all of the big-name fighters in the division are under contract with Haymon’s PBC. This situation leaves him with no choice but to defend his WBO title against less popular fighters, keeping him away from broader media coverage and lucrative paychecks.
