By Norm Frauenheim –
Risk & Reward was the message on Terence Crawford’s T-shirt at a weigh-in last Friday.
Then, it was subtle.
Nearly a week later, it’s big.
Pay-per-view numbers for the Showtime telecast of Crawford’s masterful triumph in a ninth-round stoppage of Errol Spence Jr. Saturday are evidence that risk & reward can work together instead of against each other in making fights.
Initial reports from Dan Rafael’s Fight Freaks Unite and Boxing Scene five days after the welterweight bout put the pay-per-view number at 650,000 buys. It could climb to 700,000. The reports are based on anonymous sources. There are conflicting reports of 550,000.
But either number is a success, especially for Crawford, who had never generated more than a reported 200,000 for a pay-per-view appearance.
Multiple people attached to the Crawford-Spence promotion in Las Vegas last week told 15 Rounds that 500,000 was the break-even point. The live gate at Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena was a reported $21 million. The crowd was announced at 19,990.
Spence and Crawford could each collect more than $20 million each.
Crawford’s T-shirt said it all.
It was a subtle twist, a rewrite of the ratio that had been paralyzing the business for years. It was risk-to-reward.
It worked for Floyd Mayweather, a boxer-banker who retired unbeaten and used the ratio to become the world’s richest athlete with huge paydays that included Manny Pacquiao in 2015 and mixed-martial-arts celebrity Connor McGregor a couple of years later.
The ratio became the model for the generation that followed. What worked for Mayweather, however, didn’t work after him.
Increasingly, the reward factor outweighed the risk. In effect, it became risk-versus-reward instead of risk-to-reward. It paralyzed the game, turning it into an exasperating never-never land. There were fights demanded by the market, yet most never got past the bargaining table and into the ring.
A sure sign of a business breakthrough was delivered on April 22 with Tank Davis’ stoppage of Ryan Garcia. The PPV number for that one was reported to be 1.2 million. The live gate, also at T-Mobile, was reported to be $22.8 million.
The 136-pound bout – Garcia was finished by a body punch in the seventh — didn’t compare to Crawford’s singular performance in knocking down Spence three times. Showtime will replay the telecast Saturday (9 p.m., ET/PT). But Davis-Garcia reawakened a market, one still willing to reward real risk.
Nearly three months later, Risk & Reward were there.
First, on a T-shirt.
Then, in the ring.
Valdez, Navarrete ready for AZ showdown
Oscar Valdez Jr. wraps up his training camp in Lake Tahoe, expecting a tactical challenge from unorthodox Emanuel Navarrete on August 12 at Desert Diamond Casino in Glendale AZ.
“We all know that Navarrete has an awkward style,’’ said Valdez (31-1, 23 KOs), a former two-division champion. “We might not have the perfect sparring that can emulate his style.
“But we try to imitate him in the mitt work and strategy. He’s not your typical fighter that throws straight shots.”
Valdez is a slight betting favorite over Navarrete, a fellow Mexican and a former featherweight champion who moved up the scale and won the World Boxing Organization’s junior-lightweight belt in a difficult fight against unknown Liam Wilson, also at Desert Diamond.
Wilson, a late stand-in from Australia, knocked down Navarrete in the fourth round of a controversial fight on Feb 3, also at Desert Diamond.
Navarrete spit out his mouth piece. He gained some time to recover as the referee retrieved it. Navarrete went on to batter Wilson, scoring a ninth-round TKO of the tough Aussie.
“Winning this fight would boost my career significantly,’’ Navarrete (37-1, 31 KOs) said from his camp in San Diego. “Personally, I would feel complete. What has been missing in my career is precisely a victory against someone like Valdez. It would fill me with pride to be part of such an iconic fight between Mexicans and come out victorious.”
Both fighters are well-known in Arizona. Valdez, a former Mexican Olympian who went to school in Tucson, is poised to fight for the sixth time in AZ.
Navarrete will fight for the third time in the state.
