Dream Fight In Jeopardy Because Of Contract Dispute

Well, this is a bummer if you’re a boxing fan.

The dream fight of Errol Spence Jr. vs. Terence Crawford for the undisputed welterweight championship could get called off if a nagging contract issue isn’t resolved soon, according to ESPN’s Mike Coppinger.

The pay-per-view bout slated for Las Vegas will miss its previously agreed-upon date of Nov. 19 and could get bumped back to December or January or who knows when.

The deal had Crawford earning the lesser end of the financial take. The hangup now, according to Coppinger: Crawford (38-0, 29 KOs) “wants transparency” in regards to event expenses because the terms say nothing of guaranteed money.

As a promotional free agent after splitting from Top Rank, Crawford will earn a net-revenue percentage, so he’s also requesting the power to approve all expenses. Spence (28-0, 22 KOs) is repped by Al Haymon’s PBC .

The proposed deal includes a bilateral rematch clause that the loser will have the right to exercise. But if the clause is initiated, the winner will earn the majority of the purse for a return bout.

Muddling the odds of the fight happening sooner than later is Crawford may want another fight if negotiations persist on dragging out.

The Crawford-Spence bout is a title unifier the boxing world has been craving for years. But now it’s another waiting game and getting reminiscent of the massive delays that fans endured to see Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather in May 2015 — a matchup that would’ve been more entertaining a few years earlier when both fighters were still in their prime.

Crawford, 35, has been a pound-for-pound beast for years, and he looked like the 147-pound king that he is when he scored a 10th-round TKO victory over Shawn Porter to retain his WBO title last November.

Spence, 32, has long been considered Crawford’s only qualified peer. He rebounded from detached-retina surgery with a 10th-round TKO of Yordenis Ugas in April to win the WBA crown that joined his WBC and WBA titles.

Spence was scheduled to fight Pacquiao in August 2021 but canceled the clash due to his injured retina. The other big setback of Spence’s career after an October 2019 car wreck led to him being hospitalize with a long recovery process. He did not fight again until December 2020.

And now there’s this — a contractual glitch — as the boxing word waits for a dream fight that may never happen.