With the imminent exit of Manny Pacquiao from the sport, Bob Arum has been in relative panic looking for a client who has the tools to replace the Filipino 8-division world champion as Top Rank's biggest revenue generator. In this regard, two prominent names would come out quick - Terence Crawford (30-0, 21KOs) and Vasyl Lomachenko (8-1, 6 KOs).
For a sizeable amount of time, Bob Arum, CEO of Top Rank Promotions has been moulding Crawford into becoming the promotion's cash cow like Manny Pacquiao. In the process, Terence Crawford has been doing his part by knocking out every opponent placed, by Arum, in front him. Despite the impressive outputs of the 29-year-old Omaha, Nebraska native, he is still many miles away from getting into Pacquiao's level, in terms of income generation in particular. To reach that level, Crawford apparently needs to beat Manny Pacquiao himself.
For diverse reasons Bob Arum only knows, Pacquiao-Crawford has become exceedingly difficult to make. Crawford's limited fan base has been mentioned, and possibly at the back of Arum's mind, Crawford, who is yet to prove his wares against other world class welterweights like Timothy Bradley and Jessie Vargas, might just lose to Pacquiao. Or the 85-year-old Las Vegas-based promoter really still want to keep the Philippine senator, despite his relative decline due to his advancing age, because he still brings good money into Top Rank's bank account.
For his part, the 29-year-old Vasyl Lomachenko, current holder of WBO super featherweight world title and twice an Olympic gold medalist for his native Ukraine, is emerging as a truly special fighter of his own kind. In such a dominant and stunning fashion with which he beat world class opponents as if they're like kids - like Rocky Martinez, Nicolas Walters and most recently Jason Sosa - he is certainly making himself a pay-per-view star without the so called passing of the torch. So it seems that attaining the status, Lomachenko does not need to beat Manny Pacquiao but the Ukrainian does need to beat other big fishes like George Linares, Yuriorkis Gamboa, and most of all Mikey Garcia.
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