Terence Crawford: Me And Errol Spence Jr Were Guaranteed $25M, But Al Haymon Wasn’t Interested
The undisputed welterweight title was originally scheduled for this month, November, but now it's unclear if it will ever happen.
Terence Crawford and Errol Spence Jr could have earned a guaranteed $25 million apiece, but Premier Boxing Champion head Al Haymon said no.
Crawford revealed those details during a recent 20-minute Instagram Live session. The WBO welterweight champion said that the $50 million offer came from representatives from two unnamed hedge funds.
“We’re going on and on,” Crawford said.
“You know? And of course, me and Al, you know, we’re going back and forth, back and forth about, you know, the numbers. We not going back and forth about anything else. We just going back and forth about the numbers.
“On and on, I have two companies, you know, that reach out to me that, you know, wanted to give me and Spence $25 million guaranteed – $25 million guaranteed, up front. So, a real guy like myself, I called Spence. ‘Hey, bro, look, listen, you know what I mean? I got this company that’s willing to give us $25 million apiece guaranteed. What’s up? What you gonna do?’ He like, ‘Twenty-five million? What about the back end?’
“I’m like, ‘Dude, listen, if they make they money back then we get [an] 80-20 [percentage on the back end]. You know what I mean? It’s simple math.’ I said, ‘Man, we got people who are buying the fight, I mean, stealing the fight. They got the firesticks.’ And he laughed. He like, ‘Man, I got a firestick, too.’ I’m like, ‘See.’
“I’m like, ‘Man, ain’t nobody really like buying, you know what I mean, pay-per-views no more.’ I said, ‘Man, we get this up-front money and we good. It’s a no-brainer. You know what I mean?’”
Spence told FIGHT SPORTS back in May that if a fight between him and Crawford doesn’t happen, it’s not on him.
That statement seemed to echo when it was eventually reported that Crawford and Spence had agreed to terms, but the fight was still not official because Crawford wanted full transparency on event expenses since there is no guaranteed purse – which is unusual.
PBC represents Spence while Crawford is a free agent. He left Top Rank after his TKO win over Shawn Porter in November of last year in hopes to secure bigger fights like Spence.
But their mega fight that was once targeted for November has been pushed back to February or March of 2023.
Crawford will instead fight ranked welterweight David Avanesyan on December 10 in his hometown. He said afterwards, if he’s victorious, he will continue to negotiate with Spence and PBC. Crawford said that he warned Spence and PBC that he was going to fight at least once this year either way.
Spence, however, later said that he’s not sure how much longer he’ll remain in the welterweight division to defend his WBA, IBF and WBC straps.