Early murmurs of a potential April ESPN PPV headlined by pound for pound elites Terence Crawford and Manny Pacquiao in separate bouts are starting to emerge. Crawford is almost guaranteed to be fighting WBO welterweight titleholder Jeff Horn, but the Filipino legend’s path is less clear.
Top Rank head honcho Bob Arum himself has been on the record with stating that an ESPN PPV card featuring arguable number one pound for pound fighter Terence Crawford (32-0, 23 KOs) and Filipino icon Manny Pacquiao (59-7-2, 38 KOs) in separate contests is a distinct possibility for April. The original targeted city was Las Vegas as usual, but issues securing a prominent enough venue have arisen with the seeming inevitable and surprising playoff birth for the NHL’s Las Vegas Golden Knights in their first season. Accordingly, Top Rank has turned its eye towards Madison Square Garden for April 14th.
Crawford, a two division world champion, recently announced he was moving to welterweight and vacating his undisputed junior welterweight championship along with his collection of belts. Top Rank has since moved to secure a welterweight title fight with Australian WBO titlist Jeff Horn (18-0-1, 12 KOs) for Crawford’s divisional debut. Reportedly, that matchup is basically a foregone conclusion at this point.
Who Pacquiao would fight is a much less clear picture. The former eight division titleholder and absolute legend of the sport last fought in July, losing his title controversially on the scorecards to Horn. For this fight, Top Rank is largely lacking any sort of real name value at welterweight internally. My main concern is that they may try to book it against Mike Alvarado. Alvarado is a man who has looked extremely terrible in his recent wins. Even this aging and diminished Pacman would simply roll right through him. Otherwise they will have to use someone out of house or book someone really uninspiring like Alex Saucedo or Konstantin Ponomarev.
What does seem like more of a given is the fact that the winners of Crawford versus Horn and Pacquiao fight are basically destined to fight one another next. There is no one else in Top Rank’s stable for them to fight. Unfortunately for Crawford as he looks to repeat his 140 pound dominance up a weight class, promotional rival Premier Boxing Champions basically has the division on lockdown. It will be next to impossible for Arum to get him in against a Errol Spence Jr or Keith Thurman in this environment.
Finally, Arum also noted that he and ESPN will only be doing a PPV broadcast if both of these fights come together. If Manny Pacquiao returns on a different date than Terence Crawford, then their two cards will air on regular ESPN. That is definitely a better scenario for us boxing fans, but they aren’t about to start caring about that now.
