By Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten #1 WBO lightweight contender Terence Crawford (22-0, 6 KO’s) looked very impressive last night in whipping Russian Andrey Klimov (16-1, 8 KO’s) by a 10 round unanimous decision on the undercard of the Miguel Cotto vs. Delvin Rodriguez fight card in Orlando, Florida.
Next up for Crawford could be a fight against #3 WBO Raymundo Beltran (28-6-1, 17 KO’s) if WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (36-2-1, 11 KO’s) hasn’t healed yet from his broken jaw or if his promoter chooses to steer him around Crawford, according to Dan Rafael.
There’s still a possibility that the World Boxing Organization could order a rematch between Burns and Beltran due to the controversy that surrounds their fight last September in Glasgow, Scotland.
Beltran dominated most of the fight but had to settle for 12 round draw. Very few boxing fans and writers agree with that fight being a draw, as they saw Beltran as far superior. However, I still wouldn’t be surprised if the WBO doesn’t order a Burns vs. Beltran rematch and instead lets Burns move on to face whoever his promoter Eddie Hearn wants him to.
Something tells me that Hearn won’t be picking Crawford or Beltran’s names for Burns’ next opponent. But it really doesn’t matter if Hearn chooses to keep Burns from fighting either of them, because one of those two will be fighting for the WBO title eventually once the WBO finally orders the fight. But before then, we’ll likely see Burns slip in another optional title defense and then look to unify the titles by facing IBF champion Miguel Vazquez.
In other words, Burns and Hearn would be going towards the path of the least resistance because an optional defense would probably be against a lower ranked contender near the bottom of the top 15 of a challenger with an inflated ranking but without much skills and/or power.
If they choose Vazquez to fight, it would still be going in the path of least resistance because Vazquez isn’t in the same league as Beltran or Crawford. It would still be a really tough fight for Burns, don’t get me wrong. Vazquez has a lot of skills and he’s a nightmare for most fighters, but it’s definitely the easier option for Burns than getting in the ring with Beltran again or facing Crawford and getting badly schooled.
The Crawford-Klimov fight last night wasn’t a crowd-pleasing fight despite Crawford’s mastery the entire fight. He beat Klimov by the scores 100-90, 100-90 and 100-90. However, the Orlando crowd booed almost the entire time because Klimov wouldn’t come forward to mix it up with Crawford. You can’t blame Crawford for the dull fight because it takes two to tango, and each time he would press the action, Klimov would back away to keep from getting hit.
Klimov looked like a fighter that had come just to survive and not get knocked out, and he definitely accomplished that by staying on the outside the entire night. It was definitely a horrible fight to watch, but you’ve got to blame Crawford’s promoters at Top Rank for making the match. They should have studied Klimov’s style before making this fight and seen that it wouldn’t work well with Crawford’s counter punching style of fighting.
I still thought he Crawford vs. Klimov fight was the best one on the card because of Crawford’s mad skills. He was rarely hit, and he made Klimov pay each time he would attempt to land a punch.
With a little bit of tweaking of Crawford’s fighting style, I think he can be turned into another Floyd Mayweather Jr. by turning him into a pot shot fighter that dominates his opponents. Crawford just needs to throw a lot more right hands, throw his jabs with more authority and make his opponents miss by bending backwards at the waist like Mayweather does.
Comments are closed.