Terence “Bud” Crawford says he’ll be fighting IBF welterweight champion Errol “The Truth” Spence Jr. (22-0, 19 KOs), and he questions what’s so special about him. Crawford says he’s now fighting at 147 despite him not having given up all of his 140 lb. titles.
Crawford, 29, vacated his IBF light welterweight title recently when he was ordered to defend it against IBF mandatory Sergei Lipinetch. Crawford’s promoter Bob Arum says he’ll be fighting for the WBO welterweight title next year in February or March against champion Jeff Horn in Australia. Arum says Crawford will be the WBO mandatory by that time. Arum seems pretty sure about that.
”Loma too small and Spence soon,” said Crawford when asked on his Twitter whether he is interested in fighting super featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko and/or Errol Spence. ”How do you know that who have he beat to make y’all think he so in beatable,” said Crawford about Spence. ”Brook gave up and he was damage goods from the jump. I’m special in any weight.”
Spence has too much punching power and size over Crawford. Once Crawford gets hit the first time by Spence, he’ll likely revert to form and start running around the ring trying not to get hit. I just hope Crawford doesn’t stick his tongue out at Spence while running because he could get clipped.
Crawford doesn’t like to get hit, and for him to do well at 147, he’s going to have to put himself in danger. He’s not going to jab his way to a win over Spence. The difference between Spence and Crawford’s shots is extraordinary. Spence is a big puncher.
Crawford can punch well for 140, but I doubt his power will carry up with him. He doesn’t look like he has welterweight power when he’s hitting the over-matched guys that his promoter Bob Arum has been putting in with him. Anyway, this is probably neither here nor there. If Arum doesn’t work with non-Top Rank promoters, then Crawford will spend the rest of his career fighting the likes of Jessie Vargas, Jeff Horn and Konstantin Ponomarev.
Crawford is going to find out that it’s a much different story once he starts fighting guys at 147. Crawford’s wins at 140 have come against largely mediocre guys that he had a size advantage over. Now that Crawford is going to be fighting at welterweight, that size advantage will be gone over night. He’s not going to have the power and size advantage when he gets in there with the good fighters at 147.
Crawford talks of him fighting Spence soon, but he doesn’t quite understand who does the match-making for him. His promoter Bob Arum has tends to do a lot of in house fights involving his Top Rank fighters. If you look at the match-making Arum does, a lot of the times he’s keeping his fighters facing other Top Rank guys. Arum wasn’t eager to match Pacquiao against Keith Thurman, Danny Garcia or Amir Khan despite those being fights that the boxing fans wanted to see. Now it’s obviously too late for Arum to match Pacquiao against those guys; not that that he’s suddenly started showing interest in making any of those fights. It could be the same with Crawford. If Arum is only going to match Crawford against guys from his own stable like Jessie Vargas, Konstantin Ponomarev and Jeff Horn, then there will never be a fight involving Spence, Thurman or Danny Garcia.
”I’m at 147,” said Crawford. ”Ok enough of that let’s talk about all these fighters at 147 Why people say I haven’t fought anybody?”
The reason people say Crawford hasn’t fought anybody because it’s true. Crawford’s best opponent on his resume is Yuriorkis Gamboa, who was little more than a pumped up featherweight when he fought Crawford in 2014.
These are the best guys on Crawford’s 9-year resume:
• Julius Indongo
• Yuriorkis Gamboa
• John Molina Jr.
• Andrey Klimov
• Raymundo Beltran
• Ricky Burns
• Thomas Dulorme
• Briedis Prescott
• Alejandro Sanabria
• Hank Lundy
• Felix Diaz
”All he ever did was beat up old people and Khan can’t take it to the chin and he got so many gifts,” said Crawford about Danny Garcia. ”He got more names, yes, but if I fought those same guys that was washed up and past they prime to I’ll have them on my resume too,” said Crawford.
I agree that Danny Garcia got a gift win over Mauricio Herrera, and I thought he deserved to have multiple points taken off for the high number of low blows he hit Lucas Matthysse with in their fight 4 years ago.
I don’t see things being much different for Crawford when he moves up to 147, as far as him not taking on big names. If Crawford’s promoter Arum was willing to work with the other promoters for Spence, Thurman , Garcia and Porter, we could see him fight those guys. At this point, I don’t ever see Crawford fighting any of them unless his contract with Top rank runs out one of these days and he bolts.
Even if Arum wants to make fights with those guys, I don’t think it’s going to happen. I don’t see it happening at all. Yeah, Crawford is moving up to 147, but that just means he’ll likely fight Jeff Horn 3 to 4 times. Horn is a Top Rank fighter. We’ll likely see Crawford fight a lot of rematches with Arum’s guys. That means Crawford will fight Jessie Vargas, Konstantin Ponomarev and Horn. I don’t see Spence being in the cards for Crawford, although I see his name being mentioned but never a fight.