Jeff Horn vs Terence Crawford moves to Las Vegas

Although a welterweight title fight between WBO welterweight titlist Jeff Horn (18-0-1, 12 KOs) and Terence Crawford (32-0, 23 KOs) had been pretty much announced for April 14 at Madison Square Garden, Top Rank promoter Bob Arum officially informs ESPN that the bout has now been formally agreed to on both sides — with the fight now taking place at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

Arum decided to move the event to Vegas due to a number of spring fights vying for attention in NY, including Vasyl Lomachenko’s May 12 lightweight debut — expected to come against titleholder Jorge Linares.

“Mandalay Bay is a great venue and we’re happy to put this card on there,” Arum said. “You’ve got a lot of boxing in New York coming up, so it made sense to move the fight to Las Vegas when Mandalay Bay became available.”

And as previously speculated, Arum also confirms that he’s in the process of finalizing a co-feature for this card between Manny Pacquiao (59-7-2, 38 KOs) and Mike Alvarado (38-4, 26 KOs)...(sigh).

A Pacquiao win over Alvarado is expected to lead into Pac’s next outing against either Vasyl Lomachenko or the Horn-Crawford winner, Arum also confirmed.

Finally there will be another world title fight slated for this April card, with junior featherweight titleholder Jessie Magdaleno (25-0, 18 KOs) taking on Isaac Dogboe (18-0, 12 KOs).

All three fights will be part of a Top Rank pay-per-view in conjunction with ESPN (whom I don’t believe has ever been involved in a PPV event before). Realistically, though, there was probably no other way to make the numbers work for this card other than to put it on PPV.