Two Big Fights in October Dance Between the Hailstones of College Football

This past Thursday, two important fights, long rumored, were formally announced. On Oct. 13, Terence Crawford will defend his WBO welterweight title against Jose Benavidez Jr. at the CHI Health Center in Omaha, Nebraska. No, that’s not a hospital, although there’s a certain irony in staging a prizefight in an arena with that kind of name. The CHI Health Center was formerly CenturyLink Arena and before that the Qwest Center. (We pine for the days when indoor sporting venues by the dozens were named Memorial Coliseum.)

Two weeks later, on Oct. 27, Regis Prograis will fight former WBO lightweight champion Terry Flanagan at the quaintly named Lakefront Arena in New Orleans. This is a first round match in the junior welterweight competition in the World Boxing Super Series. Prograis is the #1 seed and the future book favorite to win the 8-man tournament. If he is successful, he will gather up two title belts along the way.

Both fights feature hometown heroes who are closely identified with the city of their birth. Both fights are being held in football-mad cities during the heart of the football season. And therein lies a caution for would-be boxing promoters.

The arena in which Terence Crawford will fight seats 18,975. When Crawford fought Dierry Jean here on Oct. 24, 2015, there were more than 7,500 empty seats. The turnout – an announced crowd of 11,020 – was actually pretty good for a medium-sized city, but Crawford’s promoter Bob Arum was disappointed. And the culprit, it soon became clear, was a sports franchise sitting 60 miles away in the state capitol of Lincoln. The franchise was the Cornhuskers, more specifically the football team at the state’s flagship university.

The Cornhuskers hosted Northwestern University on that date. The football game and the boxing show in Omaha did not go head-to-head. The Cornhuskers played a day game. But seemingly the entire state turns out when the NU football team plays at home (well, not quite, only about 91,000, but as the natives will tell you, that makes the football stadium on game day the third largest city in the state).

Those interested in attending both events seemingly had ample time to double-dip. But for an out-of-towner, attending a Nebraska football game is exhausting. It pays to get there early, even if one doesn’t tailgate, just to beat the traffic. The games typically last just a little over three hours, but for many it’s an all-day affair.

Again this year, Nebraska plays Northwestern on the day that Terence Crawford fights in Omaha. But this year it’s an away game and it matters greatly that the game is locked in for an early afternoon start. Check the Nebraska Cornhuskers football schedule and you’ll find that the starting times of most of their games are currently listed TBA. This owes to the fact that TV networks have the right to dictate when a college football game will kick off with less than two weeks advance notice. If the opposing teams are hot, the network will invariably move the game to a primetime slot.

Don’t think for one minute that Bob Arum didn’t take all of these variables into consideration before potting his Omaha show on this particular date. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice by promoting an event in Nebraska on a day when the NU football team was playing at home.

Crawford, born and bred in Omaha, is a three weight class world champion and was the first unified 140-pound champion in the four belt era. Undefeated (30-0, 24 KOs), he is widely regarded as one of the top two pound-for-pound fighters in the sport. Benavidez, four years younger than Crawford at age 26, is undefeated too (27-0, 18 KOs) but will be a substantial underdog. The younger brother of 175-pound world titlist David Benavidez, he missed all of 2017 after being shot in the leg while walking his dog, an incident that has befuddled the Phoenix police.

In New Orleans, the college team 80 miles away in Baton Rouge, the LSU Tigers, gets almost as much ink in the two local papers as the city’s beloved NFL franchise, the Saints. There are 10 other colleges in Louisiana that field football teams, including Tulane University in New Orleans, but LSU, which historically plays most of their home games at night, overshadows them all and it would be foolish to stage a boxing match on a day when the Tigers are playing.

The lead promoter for Prograis-Flanagan is Comosa, an offshoot of German powerhouse Sauerland, and someone at the home office, or an affiliate, did his homework. The LSU football franchise is dormant on Oct. 27, the administrators having had the foresight to arrange a bye on the Saturday before hosting juggernaut Alabama.

Prograis (22-0, 19 KOs) has a postcard of New Orleans tattooed on his chest. Embossed with a cool nickname, “Rougarou” (we invite you to look it up), he’s won his last seven fights inside the distance. His last three opponents were a combined 65-1.

Flanagan (33-1, 13 KOs) has fought exclusively in the U.K. A southpaw, he is looking to get back on track after losing a split decision to Maurice Hooker in his last start.

Although coming off a loss, the Mancunian, on paper, clearly represents Prograis’s stiffest test to date. And if Prograis can deliver another dominant performance, he will almost certainly crack the top 10 in the pound-for-pound ratings of the various entities that perform this exercise.

In the Big Easy, it will be nice diversion from football.

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