Fannon’s warning in this video is aimed at a whole generation: Terence Crawford’s business playbook worked for Terence Crawford. Everybody copying it is copying their way into trouble — and Keyshawn Davis, in this telling, is the latest example.
Everything attributed to Bob Arum here comes through Fannon, who says he listened to an Arum interview recorded before Foster vs Navarrete; Arum does not speak in the video itself. Per Fannon’s recounting, Arum released Keyshawn from his Top Rank contract because Keyshawn asked to be released, believing a fortune was waiting at Zuffa. Before that, Arum had tried to make Keyshawn vs Devin Haney — and per the host, Keyshawn rejected $3 million for that fight, then rejected another $2 million when it went to a purse bid.
The punchline, in Fannon’s paraphrase of Arum, is that Keyshawn followed the golden calf only to find out there was no money there — Zuffa is running low too, and the Saudi money that floated this whole era, Fannon says, does not exist anymore. That, he argues, is the same reason Shakur Stevenson vs Haney never got made. It is the same wall Shakur keeps pricing himself into.
The numbers Fannon puts on the demands are $7 million a fight for Keyshawn and $15 million a fight for Shakur — money he calls ridiculous for fighters whose gates and pay-per-view history do not generate it. His worked example was hypothetical, and he framed it that way: a fight that generates $10 million might reasonably pay the fighters $3 million and $4 million. If you generate the money, you deserve it. They don’t.
Why did it work for Crawford? Politics and timing, per Fannon: Errol Spence Jr. had no other option, then Turki Alalshikh was paying top dollar when the Canelo Alvarez fight came. Crawford was also, Fannon stresses, a tremendous fighter who won the fights. Fannon also cites Alycia Baumgardner’s point about Shakur — elite in the ring, but good business means making money for yourself and your partner.
His closing blame lands on the influence itself: Keyshawn wanted to be Shakur’s little brother, Shakur is Crawford’s little brother, and the bank only gets robbed once. Rnd5 has said the same thing in different words all year: price yourself like a draw before you become one, and the sport moves on without you.
Video credit: Fannon International Boxing Channel.
