It’s official, unarguably one of the top 2 welterweights in the world and, arguably, the best pound-for-pound boxer on the planet, Terence Crawford, will be fighting someone nobody, but nobody wants to see him fight December 14 at Madison Square Garden in New York.
That guy who nobody wants to see Crawford fight is Egidijus Kavaliauskas whose “Mean Machine” nickname is nowhere near as awesomely cool as the “Lithuanian Eyechart” moniker I tagged to him a couple years ago.
Anyway, Kavaliauskas is 21-0-1 with 17 KOs and somehow became the WBO’s number one contender on the weight of wins over Mahonri Montes, David Avanesyan, and Juan Carlos Abreu. Sanctioning body maneuverings and machinations are part of the game and not really Crawford’s fault. Don’t hate the player, hate the game, right? But it IS funny how money and privilege often seem to make mandatories disappear (How many “mandatories,” for example, have guys like Canelo and Golovkin fought?) and how “mandatory” defenses only become extreme necessities when the star in question either wants a soft touch or doesn’t have anything better to do.
And Crawford definitely falls into that latter category—a star with nothing better to do right now and, currently, a rock-solid excuse for not being able to do anything other than fight a guy who got gifted a majority draw against (UnSugar) Ray Robinson in his last bout. And, of course, this unavoidable “mandatory” challenge has absolutely nothing to do with Kavaliauskas being Crawford’s Top Rank stablemate…right? Right?
What does Top Rank bossman Bob Arum have to say about this “big” December 14 MSG clash?
“Fart…Fart…Fart…Fart, fart fart.”
(Oh, sorry…I just generally hear little more than fart noises when Arum speaks)
Actually, though, Arum has had very little to say about this upcoming welterweight title fight, just declaring that the “generational talent” Crawford will “have his hands full” with the “Mean Machine.” And there’s a reason for him saying little and correctly shifting emphasis to a pair of good supporting bouts on the card (Richard Commey vs. Teofimo Lopez and Mick Conlan vs. Vladimir Nikitin). It’s because Crawford- Kavaliauskas sucks.
One has to feel for Crawford and his well-covered predicament as an elite-level welterweight stuck on the island of misfit toys while the other high-end welters pile up legacy fights over the proverbial fence at Premier Boxing Champions (PBC). But it’s certainly not the fans’ fault that Crawford’s business decisions keep them from seeing him matched against the very best of the division and it’s not their fault that they’re getting a subpar main event on what should’ve been a very high-profile card. Yet, the fans pay the price while everyone on the business-side of things cashes checks. At the very least, this one is on “regular” ESPN and not stuck on their subscription-only app.
In a perfect world, Arum and the PBC fellas would meet at the fence and make some sort of mutually beneficial deal so Crawford could have access to guys like Errol Spence, Keith Thurman, Manny Pacquiao, Shawn Porter, and Danny Garcia. But boxing is far from a perfect world and, frankly, the PBC folks don’t have to bend over backwards to ensure that Crawford, who is not on their “team,” has some legacy fights with which to measure his greatness. At the end of the day, it’s nobody’s fault but Crawford’s that his cashing of Top Rank/ESPN checks will keep him from becoming the star he should be.
The bigger problem may be that fans will have to sit through yet another fight where Crawford’s dominance is guaranteed and the outcome is never in question. At some point, the fans’ patience will wear out and they’ll just simply stop caring about all things Crawford.