At one time, Bob Arum promoted both WBO welterweight champion Terence Crawford and WBA (Super) titlist Manny Pacquiao under his Top Rank stable. A fight between the undefeated Crawford and the sport's only eight-division world champion would have been a true megafight.
The bout failed to come to fruition. If you ask Crawford, he believes that Pacquiao never wanted to face him. Now the odds of it occurring have gone down significantly with Pacquiao fighting under the Premier Boxing Champions banner for his last two fights against Adrien Broner and Keith Thurman. Not to mention that the 41-year-old Pacquiao is on the back end of his career while the 32-year-old Crawford is in the midst of his physical prime.
In an interview on the The Ak & Barak Show, Arum was asked who would have won a battle while both were in their respective primes.
"I think Crawford is an elite welterweight and a skillset that transcends the skillset of Manny Pacquiao," Arum said on . "I would go with 'Bud' Crawford. But that would be certainly in their primes, in Pacquiao's prime and Crawford's in his prime now, that would have been an amazing fight to watch."
Arum went on to suggest that Crawford was more skilled than Juan Manuel Marquez, who fought Pacquiao in four closely contested fights, with the final one ending with Marquez emphatically knocking out Pacquiao.
It is unknown who Crawford and Pacquiao will face as boxing is currently on hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic. The one name, though, who has been linked to Crawford is unified 147-pound champion Errol Spence Jr. Like Pacquiao, Spence competes under the PBC and is advised by Al Haymon. The relationship between the two promotional outfits is on solid footing these days, having co-promoted the February rematch between Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder. Arum feels because of Pacquiao's high financial demands, Crawford and Spence are the only marquee fights for each boxer at this current time.
"Yeah, because people are not going to spend money anymore on pay-per-view for fights that are not the best against the best," Arum said. "So say if Spence fights a Danny Garcia, that fight's not going to do well on PPV. The only fight that Spence could have that would do well on pay-per-view is against Crawford and the same for Crawford against Spence. Now a Manny Pacquiao fight would do good numbers on pay-per-view. But Pacquiao's purse demands between $20-25 million make it a non-starter in this kind of economic situation. So I think that Crawford and Spence is very, very likely. I haven't discussed it with him lately, but I think Al Haymon would think the same thing."