How do we know the welterweight title bout, scheduled for Saturday night, between Terence Crawford and Shawn Porter is an important event in the boxing world?
Not by the championship at stake. Crawford, a versatile switch-hitter from Omaha, Neb., owns the World Boxing Organization belt, considered the least prestigious of the four major titles, with the three other titles scattered between Errol Spence and Yordenis Ugas.
And not by the venue. Where most top-tier title fights in Las Vegas happen at the MGM Grand, or at T-Mobile Arena, Crawford will meet Porter, a rugged, resourceful challenger from Akron, Ohio, at the Mandalay Bay Arena.
Instead, we know this fight is significant because it’s happening at all. Crawford (37-0), is promoted by Top Rank, while Porter (31-3-1), is signed to Premier Boxing Champions, the outfit run by boxing power broker Al Haymon. Those two companies have spent the last six years grappling for market share, and only tend to cooperate on the highest stakes title fights. The 2015 welterweight title bout between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao was one such bipartisan fight, as were the two most recent heavyweight title fights between Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder.
Crawford-Porter is clearly not a Mayweather-Pacquiao level mega-event, but the pairing is an acknowledgment that making the best matches possible requires crossing normally intractable divides between promoters. At a news conference this week, Top Rank President Bob Arum signaled that cross-promotional bouts might, at last, become more common.
“It’ll be the rule,” Arum said, when asked whether Crawford-Porter was an exception to boxing industry norms. “Crawford and Porter is the best that boxing can offer.”
Making significant fights across promotional divides is one challenge, but marketing them is another.
Mayweather and Pacquiao benefited from pent-up demand. They were the sport’s two biggest pay-per-view draws, and had a seven-year lead-up to their blockbuster bout, filled with bitter accusations of steroid use and ducking. Likewise, Tyson Fury, promoted by Top Rank, and P.B.C. client Deontay Wilder, benefited from high-volume trash talk ahead of their second and third bouts, helping sell the events as equal parts sport and spectacle.
But in the weeks preceding their title fight, Crawford, who goes by the nickname Bud, and Porter, known as Showtime, have struggled to find unkind things to say about each other. Porter admitted he could not rattle Crawford with trash talk.
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What If Elon Musk Wants to Build a Rocket on the Roof of the Dakota? “I don’t think there’s really much I can say to Bud that’s going to change the way you think about yourself, and the outcome of this fight,” Porter told Crawford directly in front of reporters.
Sign up for the Sports Newsletter Get our most ambitious projects, stories and analysis delivered to your inbox every week. Get it sent to your inbox. Crawford, for his part, praised Porter before he declared himself the superior fighter.
“He’s athletic. He can box. He can bang,” he said. “I just think I do a lot of things better than Shawn.”
Contrast their mutual respect with the rancor preceding the recent super-middleweight title fight between Saul Álvarez and Caleb Plant, who traded insults and blows at a news conference, then sold out the MGM Grand Garden Arena, and the challenge of selling this fight becomes clear. ESPN, which will air the bout as a pay-per-view on its streaming service, ESPN+, has helped hype the event via fight-week programming, and recurring ads alongside the bottom-of-the-screen score ticker. But the fighters themselves haven’t provided the fiery quotes and macho posturing that could land on highlight shows, get shared on social media, and expand the bout’s appeal beyond hard-core boxing fans.
Still, organizers say consumer demand remains strong. It is too early to tell how many viewers will buy the event on ESPN+, but Top Rank expects to have sold out the 12,000-seat Mandalay Bay Arena by Saturday.
Those figures speak to the quality of the matchup: a pairing of top-five welterweights, with implications for the rest of the division.
Crawford and Porter, both 34, were born a month apart — Crawford in September of 1987, and Porter in October — and have been acquaintances since the mid 2000s, when they were both world-class amateurs. Back then, Porter was a stocky, 165-pound middleweight, and has since slimmed down to welterweight. Crawford competed in the 132-pound lightweight class as an amateur, and has grown into the 147-pound welterweight class as a pro.
On Thursday, Top Rank published a video detailing a straightforward origin story for this bout. Porter phoned Crawford and requested a title shot. The conversation and subsequent agreement revealed an easy rapport between the fighters, but Crawford insists he can pause the friendship until after the fight.
“Once we signed the contract, the switch flipped on,” Crawford said.
Porter, whose only losses are close defeats in world title fights, is a dogged competitor who blends skill with physical strength and steady pressure. In March 2019 he defeated Ugas to win the World Boxing Council title, then lost that belt to Spence in his next bout.
But the undefeated Crawford is the headliner. He has won world titles in three divisions, switching between orthodox and southpaw stances, boxing and brawling tactics as situations dictate. In his last bout, in November 2020, he dismantled the challenger Kell Brook of England. That win was Crawford’s eighth straight by knockout or technical knockout.
