Terence Crawford seemed to be leaning toward a fight with British veteran Kell Brook when the coronavirus threat took hold a few months ago, pushing those discussions to the back burner.
Where do things stand now?
Well, if Top Rank President Todd DuBoef knows, he isn’t saying just yet.
“We’re in a pause right now,” DuBoef told Sky Sports. “Terence is a very, very special fighter, probably pound-for-pound one or two on everybody’s list, in a great division. People have talked about him and Errol Spence, people have talked about him and [Manny] Pacquiao, so he has lots of matches to be made.
“He’s just a special fighter with great boxing ability, power, and he’s come up the ranks by that door opening, and he took that opportunity against [Yuriorkis] Gamboa and really made a name for himself. He’s doing terrific and we look forward to getting him back in the ring as soon as possible.”
Crawford and Brook, a former 147-pound titleholder who has fought as high as 160, seemed to be on track for a fight before the pandemic.
DuBoef acknowledged that Crawford had expressed strong interest in the fight. And Brook went so far as to tell Sky Sports that “everybody is on the same page,” which might be another way of saying an agreement in principal was in place.
Then COVID-19 hit.
“A couple of months ago, in February, there was a lot of chatter about Kell Brook,” DuBoef said. “And Crawford says, ‘I’ll go up in weight, he can come down, I don’t care. I’ll take care of him. I want to fight him.’
“Kell and his team have reached out to us, and I think we were going to … be meeting with him in New York for those March events.”
Brook said he ran into Top Rank CEO Bob Arum on a recent trip to Las Vegas.
“I saw Bob out in America,” he told Sky Sports a few weeks ago. “I seen him walking through the lobby in the MGM Grand. I basically went over and said, ‘You’re running out of opponents for Crawford, and I’m the guy to beat him. I’m here.’
“I saw Terence Crawford. He said he was ready for it. So everybody is on the same page. Everyone wants to make the fight. We just need to make the numbers count for me, for it to make business sense, and then we can get training and get ready for the fight.
“The weight won’t be a problem. Obviously, I’m going to have to get the steppers out, chase the kids around the house, and that will help me get the weight off. I’ve got enough time. If we can agree on what we need to, we can get into gear and we can make welterweight for the world title championship.”
Brook hasn’t fought at 147 pounds since he was stopped by Errol Spence. Jr. in May 2017. He has won three consecutive junior middleweight fights since.