Crawford gloats after win: “I told Gamboa ‘you shouldn’t have taken this fight'”

By Dan Ambrose: WBO lightweight champion Terence Crawford (24-0, 17 KO’s) was in the mood to gloat about his win at the post-fight press conference on Saturday night after knocking challenger Yuriorkis Gamboa (23-1, 16 KO’s) in the 9th round at the CenturyLink Center in Omaha, Nebraska.

Crawford said after the fight at the post-fight press conference, “We train extremely hard. I was ready for anything he was gonna bring. I commend Gamboa. But I was destined to win. I told him, ‘You shouldn’t have taken this fight.’”

You couldn’t blame Gamboa for taking the fight because he had tried to get a fight against Mikey Garcia at super featherweight, but Top Rank couldn’t make that fight. So instead of letting Gamboa fight Mikey, and possibly beat him, they let Gamboa fight the bigger Crawford, who is more like a light welterweight than a lightweight.

Gamboa was destined to have problems just based on Crawford’s size alone. The fact that he lost the fight tonight by a 9th round stoppage isn’t surprising really, because it would have taken a miracle for a the featherweight sized Gamboa to defeat someone with a half foot reach advantage to go along with his near 4 inch height advantage.

It’s easy for Crawford to say that Gamboa shouldn’t have taken the fight, but he’s not at the stage where he can say no to title fights, especially ones that make good money.

For a fighter giving up as much size as Gamboa was in this fight, he did an admirable job in making it an exciting fight. This fight is definitely a Fight of the Year candidate due to the back and forth excitement. Crawford talks as if he dominated the fight, but he really didn’t other than the rounds where he scored knockdowns in the 5th, 8th and 9th rounds. You take away the knockdowns, and you’ve got a very close fight.

It’s going to be interesting to see who Crawford fights next if he does move up in weight to the light welterweight division. If he practices what he preaches, then he needs to take on someone tough when he moves up like Lucas Matthysse or Ruslan Provodnikov. Those two fighters punch plenty hard, and it would be a good experience for Crawford to face those guys because they’re almost as big as him.