Arum working hard to finalize Lomachenko-Walters, Crawford-Postol
While Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is mainly focused on drumming up as much publicity as possible for the Manny Pacquiao-Timothy Bradley III HBO PPV card on April 9, he is also working on two significant fights that will take place this summer if he can get them done.
Both are among the best matches that can be made in their respective weight classes.
One is a junior lightweight fight between featherweight titleholder Vasyl Lomachenko (5-1, 3 KOs), who would move up one division, and former featherweight titleholder Nicholas Walters (26-0-1, 21 KOs). It would headline a June 11 HBO-televised card from the Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York.
The other is a junior welterweight title unification fight between Terence Crawford (28-0, 20 KOs) and Viktor Postol (28-0, 12 KOs), which would headline an HBO PPV card on July 23 in either the Los Angeles area or Las Vegas.
Arum gave ESPN.com an update on both cards on Tuesday.
Lomachenko, Arum said, has agreed to the fight but they are still far apart on money with Walters, who initially asked for a career-high purse (by about three times) of $1 million for the fight -- the same amount HBO would pay for the entire bout.
“We’re still talking to Walters but it’s a Lomachenko date. We’ll find another opponent if Walters is not reasonable,” Arum said. “There’s a dialogue going back and forth but I can’t pay him what I don’t have. He’s off the million dollars but he has to come down. Look, I’m willing to do this for a slight loss but I’m not going to blow to my brains out.”
Arum said his aim is wrap it up one way or the other by the end of the week. He said he and Walters’ associates are on the same page when it comes to what that reasonable price is -- which he did not disclose -- but that the fighter had to get on board.
“We’ve offered him money that assures us that we’ll lose a couple of hundred thousand on the fight but I went this far. I am willing to lose that amount but not more,” Arum said.
Arum added that he has three potential backup opponents that HBO has approved for Lomachenko, but he declined to say who they are.
The co-feature will include elite Puerto Rican prospect Felix Verdejo (20-0, 14 KOs) in a fight on the eve of the annual Puerto Rican Day parade in New York as long as he wins an April 16 UniMas-televised fight in Puerto Rico (opponent to be determined). Arum said Verdejo would probably fight Mexico’s Jose Felix Jr. on June 11.
That would represent a major step up in competition for Verdejo. Felix (33-1-1, 25 KOs) has won six fights in a row since his only loss, a decision to Bryan Vasquez for an interim junior lightweight belt in 2014.
Arum said the Crawford-Postol fight is close to being made.
“We’re discussing it with both of them and trying to get the numbers right,” Arum said. “Negotiations are going on and we’re getting very close.”
Arum said one of the conditions Postol asked for was that the fight not be in Omaha, Nebraska, Crawford’s hometown. Arum said agreeing to that was no problem.
Arum said the undercard of the pay-per-view would include at least one other world title fight, perhaps Gilberto Ramirez (33-0, 24 KOs) in his first defense should he win a super middleweight belt from Arthur Abraham (44-4, 29 KOs) on the Pacquiao-Bradley III undercard or newly crowned welterweight titleholder Jessie Vargas (27-1, 10 KOs) in his first defense since winning the vacant belt by ninth-round knockout against Sadam Ali on March 5.
at the Cotto part.
breh you gotta pay ya dues and I can't hold ya hand type shyt or etc....
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...man im dying at my desk...let me give you some +rep for the bolded
he name dropped Prince on some 
