By Scott Gilfoid: WBO lightweight champion Terence Crawford (25-0, 17 KOs) will be moving up to the 140 pound division for his next fight on 4/18 in Omaha, Nebraska.
The possible opponent for his first fight in this weight class as Thomas Dulorme, according to Fightnews. Crawford’s co-manager Brian McIntyre is interested in matching him against Lucas Matthysse, Chris Algieri and Mauricio Herrera, although it’s highly unlikely we’ll see Crawford face any of those guys in his first fight in the light welterweight division.
Matthysse would be especially dangerous due to his power and the kind of pressure that he puts on his opponents. Crawford was buzzed at one point by Yuriorkis Gamboa in their fight last year in June of 2014, and if Gamboa was able to hurt Crawford, then Matthysse would have an excellent chance doing far worse.
Top Rank is going to need to be careful with Crawford for a while before they put him in with guys that are dangerous. I mean, Dulorme has good punching power, but he’s not the puncher that Matthysse is.
Dulorme is a good start for Crawford and that fight will tell the boxing fans whether Crawford will be a factor in this weight class. If Dulorme is able to walk through Crawford’s shots to punish him, then it might be a good idea for Crawford to move back down to 135 so he won’t ruin his career against the stronger fighters in this weight class.
Top Rank is grooming Crawford to try and turn him into a big star, and likely matching him against Manny Pacquiao in the near future. They can’t wait too long because Pacquiao is already getting up there in age at 36.
It wouldn’t be fair to Pacquiao to have him fight Crawford in four years when Pacquiao if 40 and Crawford only 31. Before then, there’s some potentially good fighters that Crawford can be matched against like Chris Algieri, Ruslan Provodnikov, Adrien Broner, Danny Garcia, Viktor Postol, Matthyse, Lamont Peterson and Mikey Garcia. Getting the Al Haymon fighters like Broner, Garcia, Matthysse and Peterson to fight Crawford may prove to be impossible due to Haymon not having a working relationship with Crawford’s promoter Bob Arum. But, fights against Algieri, Pacquiao, Garcia, Provodnikov and Postol are definite possibilities.
Ideally, Crawford needs to move up to the welterweight division if he wants to get the best fights, because the light welterweight division is still too sectioned off with guys that Crawford will likely never get a chance to fight due to him being with Top Rank instead of Haymon or Golden Boy Promotions.
Crawford is coming off of a 12 round decision win over Raymundo Beltran in his last fight in November of 2014. It was a fight that showed the good and the bad of Crawford. While he did a good job of using his boxing skills to dominate Beltran and shut down his offense, Crawford’s fighting style was boring in the eyes of a lot of fans.
Crawford’s fans in Omaha, which is where the Crawford-Beltran fight took place, loved the way he fought. However, general fans just wanting to see a good fight didn’t like all the holding and moving that Crawford did, and they complained that it was boring to watch him.
Crawford is going to need to be a little more offensively inclined if he wants to win fans outside of the Omaha area, because the constant holding and moving that Crawford does is less than thrilling for some fans to watch.
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