On July 23rd at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Terence Crawford (28-0, 20KOs) makes his debut as pay-per-view headliner, as he tries to unify his WBO 140-pound title against WBC champion Viktor Postol (28-0, 12KOs). It's an event where Bob Arum will have tempered expectations.
"We're going to do the best we can," said the veteran promoter.
"We have an obligation to Terence to keep him active and to make him a pay-per-view star. This is his first (pay-per-view) fight, we're going to sell it to as many homes as we can. One thing I can say without any question is we're offering the public a really big, competitive fight, two of the best guys at 140-pounds and a good undercard."
Young Mexican stars Gilberto Ramirez and Oscar Valdez will be a part of this show along with a welterweight match between Jose Benavides and Francisco 'Chia' Santana.
In terms of what would be considered a good buy-rate for this pay-per-view, Arum says - "If we do anything north of 100 (thousand), I'd be happy."
This event is priced to sell with the pay-per-view being $50 and tickets in the range from $300-$50 throughout the arena, which will be scaled down for this card.
The reason this fight is on pay-per-view is that HBO simply doesn't have the budget to support three of Crawford's appearances this year. And there are rumors that they have a shrinking boxing budget at the network.
But Arum says - "Well, that's not going to last that long with HBO. I've been told and I believe it's just for this year but it gives us the opportunity to break out Terence as a pay-per-view star. So that if we're able to do it with this fight, than it will be something that was not good, that we turned into something that is very good."
Article courtesy of Steve Kim (Boxing Scene)
