Terence Crawford stops Amir Khan – RESULTS

Terence Crawford stops Amir Khan – RESULTS

Terence Crawford stops Amir Khan – RESULTS

Terence Crawford stops Amir Khan – RESULTS

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A bulked up WBO welterweight champion Terence Crawford (35-0, 26 KOs) landed a textbook low blow to score a stoppage of challenger former IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir “King” Khan (33-5, 20 KOs) in a highly disappointing end to a fight on ESPN pay-per-view on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden in New York.

After the fight, Crawford claimed it wasn’t a low blow that incapacitated Khan, but slow motion replay showed that was indeed a shot that strayed low. “It wasn’t a low blow.” Ah, yeah, it WAS a lot blow, and Khan looked like he was needed some serious help after getting hit with. It looked painful watching it. That’s a bad way of being stopped.

Khan, 32, fought well in the fifth round, but in the sixth, Crawford nailed him with a MONSTROUS low blow right to the groin area. Khan was too hurt to continue. He looked like he was agony. Even thought it was an illegal punch from Crawford, the referee still gave him credit for a knockout.

The official time of the stoppage was at 0:47 of round six. Obviously this was a disappointing ending for the mostly one-sided fight. For the paying boxing fans that ordered the Crawford vs. Khan fight on ESPN pay-per-view, they didn’t get their money’s worth in seeing the fight stopped on a foul from Crawford. It’s just unfortunate that a fighter can win when they foul an opponent and injure them, as we saw with Khan. The boxing rule book needs to be changed, because fighters can game the system by hitting their opponents as hard as possible with blows, and then win if they can’t continue.

Earlier in the fight, Crawford knocked Khan down in the first round with a right hand counter. Khan was hurt, but he survived the round. After the first, Khan calmed down a little, and wasn’t hurt by any of Crawford’s shots until the low blow in the sixth. Crawford tried to take advantage of Khan being hurt from the previous round, but he was nailed by some combination shots and he decided to play it safe and bide his time.

Crawford switched to southpaw in the third, and fought that way much of the time in the fourth and fifth rounds. Crawford as effective on offense from the southpaw stance as he’d been when he was fighting out of the orthodox right handed stance, but he did a better job blocking Khan’s jab

In the fourth round, Crawford stepped up the pace and started nailing Khan with single power shots. Crawford, 31, wasn’t putting his shots together, because Khan was catching him each time he’d get greedy and try and throw combinations. Crawford didn’t want to get hit with anything silly, so he stuck with his one punch at a time attacks. At the end of the fourth round, Khan landed a BIG right hand to the head of the Nebraska native Crawford that got his attention. That shot made it clear that Crawford might be in trouble when/if he ever faces the elite level welterweights instead of the non-punchers he’s been matched against by his promoters at Top Rank.

In the fifth, Khan started to open up on Crawford, and it was looking the fight was changing hands. However, Khan’s progressed was stopped in the sixth round when Crawford greeted him with a powerful low blow shot that would have felled anybody in the sport, and I mean ANYBODY. That shot was devastating. The question is, did Crawford intentionally throw it to weaken Khan? Things were starting to look bad for Crawford with Khan getting back into the fight. Did Crawford choose to take the steam out of Khan’s game with a low blow? We’ll never know for sure. All we know is Khan looked hurt, very hurt, and it didn’t look like he was faking. He looked like he needed medical attention due to the pain.

It was a terrible way for Crawford to win, and you have to feel sorry for all the boxing fans that ordered the fight on ESPN PPV. They must be very upset.

Crawford looked like he packed on 15 pounds of pure muscle for this fight compared to his last one in October of last year against Jose Benavidez Jr. Crawford has really been hitting the weights. He looked MUCH bigger than Khan inside the ring. If Errol Spence Jr. ever fights Crawford, you won’t be able to say that Spence has a size advantage over him. if Crawford looks like this or bigger, it’s going to be hard for Spence to try and use his size to win. With that said, the extra size that Crawford put on seemed to tire him out, because he wasn’t as effective in the fifth and sixth rounds as he had in the first four rounds. It’s possible that all that muscle weight that Crawford put on slowed him down, and tired him. That’s the problem with fighters that bulk up dramatically the way Crawford did. If you change your physique too rapidly by adding 10 to 20 lbs of extra muscle, it hurts your stamina. Crawford isn’t going to beat a fighter with size and great stamina like Spence if he fades after five rounds like we saw tonight. Of course, if Crawford nails Spence with a low blow with all his might like he did Khan, then it won’t matter. Spence will be out of the fight.