Bob Arum wants to make Crawford-McGregor two-fight series

Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images

Here’s something you didn’t want and will almost certainly never get.

Thanks to Conor McGregor’s emphatic TKO win over Donald Cerrone at UFC 246, we can officially kick the needless push for McGregor to fight a pro boxer into overdrive. When McGregor isn’t doing it himself, you now have Bob Arum expressing interest in having one of his biggest stars face off against the Irishman.

Yes, the Top Rank Boxing promoter went on Michael Woods’ TalkBOX podcast to discuss multiple topics, including his desire to see WBO welterweight champion Terence Crawford face McGregor in a two-fight, two-sport showdown.

“I would love to have [Terence] Crawford fight McGregor, once MMA rules and once boxing rules,” Arum said. “Crawford has a background in wrestling and would not be adverse to fighting McGregor with UFC rules.

“That’s something that’s occurred to us in the last couple of days, and we’ll be pursuing it with Dana White,” Arum added.

Top Rank and the UFC are under the same ESPN banner, but let’s just say that Arum and White working together is probably the one thing less likely than the idea of McGregor vs. Crawford under any rule-set.

Crawford (36-0, 27 KOs) is known as one of the best pound-for-pound boxers in the world, but he does have that aforementioned wrestling background and is notably friends with UFC featherweight Mirsad Bektic. While Crawford has respect for MMA and its fighters, he has gone on record as saying he doesn’t intend to compete in the sport, stating that MMA doesn’t pay well enough.

…Of course, that hasn’t stopped him from teasing fans on social media by tweeting at Dana White.

Hopefully this silliness never gets off the ground and that Top Rank instead has its sights set on finally getting meaningful fights for “Bud” against the top welterweights in the division.