Terence Crawford looking to fill HBO’s Dec. 10 Golovkin-Jacobs slot

There’s sort of been a revolving door for HBO’s scheduled December 10th card. First Canelo Alvarez was slated to headline the show, but a hand injury forced him out until next year. Then everyone was excited that a fight between Gennady Golovkin and Daniel Jacobs was being eyed as the replacement, but those negotiations dragged on to the point where that’s no longer the working theory. Now ESPN reports that junior welterweight titlist Terence Crawford is in talks to be the new headliner for the HBO date.

With both Canelo and GGG-Jacobs off the Dec. 10 date, HBO has a nice chunk of change in the budget which has been earmarked for the card. Now Crawford, who wanted to fight three times this year but was only scheduled for two, just might get his wish. Top Rank’s Bob Arum, who promotes Crawford, had this to say on the topic:

"We're hoping to get it done and hoping to get a good opponent," Arum said. "We're working on Dec. 10 for Crawford, but we and HBO only want to do it if it's a significant fight."

“Significant” is certainly a relative term that means different things to different people, but Arum is hesitant to talk about potential opponents until a deal is officially signed between Crawford and HBO.

ESPN’s Dan Rafael suggests that both Crawford and HBO would likely be open to fights against either Russian IBF titlist Eduard Troyanovsky or Antonio Orozco, who is Crawford’s WBC mandatory challenger. I guess we’ll just have to see how that all shakes out.