What do you think of the collapse of Haney Shakur and kind of where Shakur goes from here?

You know, I think they'll have to work, assuming Shakur signs with Zufa Boxing, I think they'll have to work with other promoters, much like they did here with Conor Benn, right? They're working with another promoter and potentially another platform to try to get the fights that he wants.

Because if Shakur is going to fight at 140 pounds, you know who the other champions are.

They're going to have to work with other promoters.

I didn't think, you know, I was slightly optimistic because they, Well, Haney certainly seemed to want the fight.

He was willing to go down to 144 pounds, a weight at which he's fought relatively recently, a little over a year ago.

He still thinks that he can make it.

Now, maybe those terms go up a little bit because he beat Bacram in between, but they're on the same page of what it's going to

Where do we stand with Top Rank? What is going on with their broadcast situation? Are they getting close to something? Are they not close? What's the latest that you've heard?

Yeah, not an ideal night for them to be going, particularly if you don't have a deal to announce and you need to put this fight on pay-per-view, even at a small price point.

Then you're going to go head-to-head with one of your own – Tiafema Lopez is still their fighter.

Yes.

So you'd be going – you'd be – technically you'd be going up against your, wherever they put it, they're competing against themselves because Teofimo Lopez is still a top rank fighter.

They still get a piece of his, however, you know, invested Turkey Al-Sheikh, the ring, Riyadh season is in Teofimo Lopez.

Top rank is his promoter of record.

Um, Do you buy that we have seen the last of Terrence Crawford in a boxing ring?

What do you think of kind of the reported pay structure of some of these guys?

Well, I think it's accurate as it relates to that contract.

The contracts do vary.

They're not cookie cutter contracts.

I mean, there's a lot of things within the contracts that are similar in terms of the pay structures, but they're not all exactly the same.

And I understand the...

You know, some people being skeptical of this being able to be pulled off, particularly, you know, in the boxing space.

that was a

Overall, if someone were to ask you, like, "What the hell happened on Saturday at Barclays in Brooklyn? What the hell was that?" What, what is the answer that you provide to them?

That is definitely the appropriate question, that's for sure.

[laughs] But a lot of...

In real time, I was like, man, I, I've seen a lot in my, you know, almost 30 years of covering the sport, and that was, that was something else.

So, uh, really what happened was, uh, Steve Willis just did not do what he's supposed to do as a, as a professional referee, and then the New York State Athletic Commission did not do what it was supposed to do as the regulator of the event and the entity that is, uh, tasked with upholding the integrity of a sporting event.

Um, and then Lamont Roach was cost millions of dollars unfortunately, and it's primarily the fault of the New York State Athletic Commission.

Um, replay was there to be used, Ariel, and, and why was it not used? I've heard some excuses about, um, a technical malfunction.

Right.

What do you make of his not expressing more interest in a fight that would be like the Super Bowl over in Japan?

I don't mean to keep repeating myself, Chris, but what I would say is, what did T.J. Doheny do? He doesn't have any titles, and he fought him.

And it was a voluntary defense.

So, again, you can't move the goalposts when you're talking about fighter A to fighter B to fighter C. I mean, the same principles need to apply in all cases.

And he seemingly does not want to fight Akhmad Aliyev and does not want to fight...

Nakatani.

That seems fairly obvious to me at this point, so I don't know until he proves us wrong and goes and takes those types of fights.

I don't know, would that have been too expensive a fight to make?

That we are going to get Canelo against Crawford in 2025.

I do, Chris.

I think it's a fight that the public wants.

We've talked about the fight many times on the podcast.

There was a point when I was like, I don't really need to see that.

He's going to move up three weight classes.

At that point, he was going to move up three weight classes because it was before Terrence Crawford fought at 154 pounds.

uh out there about this is that better be if hasn't had this kind of quick turnaround in a while i mean he's been a one fight a year type of guy for some time but dealing with a lot of injuries you know over the last five or six years now he's got a fight in october and now he's turning around in late february uh are you expecting anything different in better be a people too