Premier Boxing Champions
The Terence Crawford-Errol Spence Jr. boxing match on July 29 in Las Vegas is seen as "both marquee for the sport and a draw for casual fans who might not normally care about -- or pay for -- a boxing event,” according to Emmanuel Morgan of the N.Y. TIMES. Crawford holds the World Boxing Organization welterweight title while Spence is the "champion among the three other major sanctioning bodies,” meaning the winner will become the "first undisputed champion of the weight class since 1988.” The fight offers a "rare bout with two of the best boxers in the world fighting each other in their prime.” The fight went "unscheduled until 2021 in large part" because Crawford’s former promoter, Top Rank, “rarely did business with Spence’s promoter, Premier Boxing Champions, because of conflicts about fight distribution.” But the boxing calendar this year has “quickly filled up with enticing shows,” including the Gervonta Davis-Ryan Garcia fight in April and the Devin Haney-Vasiliy Lomachenko bout in May. Showtime Sports President Stephen Espinoza said that he “hoped those kinds of matchups would become more common as boxers came to see the fights as cultural events” (N.Y. TIMES, 6/14).
