TERENCE “BUD” CRAWFORD has ignited a firestorm in filing a recent lawsuit against Top Rank’s Bob Arum, accusing him of damaging his career due to “revolting racial bias” and alleging breach of contract and fraudulent and negligent representation in failing to follow through on promises to secure him a unification fight with Errol Spence Jnr.

In going after Arum with such venom, the 34-year-old WBO welterweight champion and pound for pound best in the world contender, is clearly in no mind to take any prisoners.

Further intrigue surrounds the fact that Crawford’s adviser is Dubai-based Dan Kinahan, a man whom the Irish authorities have long claimed sits at the apex of an international drugs cartel and whom they allege has ordered a string of murders in Ireland over the course of a gang war that’s been raging there since 2016.

When the allegations concerning Kinahan made headlines in Britain last year — this after heavyweight king Tyson Fury went public in lauding Kinahan’s role in his own career — Arum, Fury’s US promoter, did not hestitate to come out and publicly defend Kinahan and to praise his role in boxing.

It begs the question of whether Kinahan played any part in advising Crawford to sue Arum and if so, why, given Arum’s previous public support and defence of him?

Arum has dismissed Crawford’s lawsuit as “frivolous” in a statement and claims that the reason the Spence fight couldn’t be made was because both fighters wanted too much money.

He also cites his long record of working with black fighters throughout his promotional career, which began in 1966 with the Ali v Chuvalo fight.

The 90-year-old has also been defended by the likes of George Foreman and Timothy Bradley over Crawford’s allegations, with the latter stating: “In all my years with Top Rank, I’ve never, ever been mistreated in that fashion at all. Point blank, period. And I’m going to leave at that.”

It should be noted that Crawford is by no means the only fighter to sue Arum. Mikey Garcia previously did so in 2014 over a contractual dispute, which kept him out of the ring for two and a half years, while Floyd Mayweather Jnr, who spent a long part of his pro career with Top Rank, has also accused the veteran promoter of racial basis in the past.

In his lawsuit, which he filed in Nevada and under which he is seeking $5.4 million (£4.03m) in damages, Crawford argues that “Arum’s sordid history with athletes of colour, especially black fighters, and his bias favouring white and Latino fighters is well-documented and known throughout the boxing world.”

Many will be uncomfortable at the issue of race being raised so openly in boxing at such a sensitive time in the US over the issue; what with the continuing societal fallout from the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 by white police officer Derek Chauvin.

Boxing, moreover, is a sport in which African-American athletes have long excelled as fighters, trainers and even promoters given the dominant position which Don King held for many decades.

And, too, the legacies of the likes of Jack Johnson and Ali continue to resonate as black champions who defied the white supremacist character of US society in their own eras both in and out of the ring.

Crawford also cites Arum’s refusal to place the Black Lives Matter logo on the ring of Top Rank promoted fights as further evidence of his alleged racial bias, though some may argue that while this would enjoy the endorsement of some fans it would alienate others, mirroring the heightened passions surrounding George Floyd and Black Lives Matter in US society at large.

Crawford made no secret of his disdain for Arum immediately after his victory over Shawn Porter on November 21 last year, when in the post office press conference with an impassive Arum sitting alongside him, he criticised Arum’s failure to make the Spence fight and confirmed that he would be moving on from Top Rank now that his contract was up.

Who knows what the outcome of Crawford’s lawsuit will be? However, even if it fails to succeed it will surely do so at the cost of reputational harm to Arum and also Top Rank.

Arum at 90 may well be impervious to any fallout from this imbroglio of course, but boxing as a whole is not and what’s more it can’t afford to be.

Taking a wider view, the history of US sports is littered with black athletes taking a stand against racism and white supremacy.

Jack Johnson’s stand was that of a man who refused to know his place when it came to his personal life and habits, while Ali was militantly and unapologetically black and proud as a member of the Nation of Islam.

At the Mexico Olympics in 1968 Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave the black power salute on the podium as the Star Spangled Banner played.

In recent years former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick stirred controversy over his decision to take a knee prior to NFL games as the national anthem was playing, doing so in solidarity with the victims of racial injustice in the US.

Regardless of the whys and wherefores of Crawford’s lawsuit, any fighter who stands up for himself outside the ring does so in defiance of a tradition which dicates that it means career suicide. On this level at least you have to give Crawford credit.

Arum belongs to an age in which promoters held all the cards and power. Shifting this power imbalance between promoters and fighters is long overdue. Doing so structurally, however, will require the establishment of a fighters’ union.

Such a union comes into the category of an idea whose time has come.