Crawford hopes to replace Mayweather and Pacquiao as No. 1 pound-for-pound star

By Boxing News - 06/20/2016 - Comments

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By Chris Williams: WBO light welterweight champion Terence Crawford (28-0, 20 KOs) is a little over a month away from his debut on HBO pay-per-view against WBC light welterweight champion Viktor Postol (28-0, 12 KOs) on July 23 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. With Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao no longer fighting, Crawford wants to be seen as the successor to those two stars as the No.1 pound-for-pound fighter.

Whether the now 28-year-old Crawford can accomplish that heavy task remains to be seen. Crawford is No.6 on Ring Magazine’s pound-for-pound rating, and I’m not sure that he’s got the fighting style to beat out the guys above him. Crawford is more of a counter puncher, and he doesn’t put his chin on the line the way you like to see with the No.1 pound-for-pound stars.

“This isn’t just opening night for a new phase of my career. I want this to be the beginning of a long run as boxing’s next pound for pound star and a worthy successor to Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr,” said Crawford.

Here are Ring Magazine’s top 10 pound-for-pound fighters:

1. Roman Gonzalez
2. Sergey Kovalev
3. Gennady Golovkin
4. Andre Ward
5. Guillermo Rigondeaux
6. Terence Crawford
7. Vasyl Lomachenko
8. Canelo Alvarez
9. Shinsuke Yamanaka
10. Naoya Inoue

Crawford needs to change his fighting style if he wants to become the successor to Mayweather and Pacquiao. Crawford needs to be more aggressive, and he needs to be willing to get hit. He’s too defensive, and it’s boring sometimes for me to watch his fights. One other thing that is going to keep Crawford from becoming the No.1 pound for pound guy is his opposition. If Crawford is just going to be fighting guys like Hank Lundy, Dierry Jean, Raymundo Beltran and Postol, then I don’t see him being able to make the leap to the No.1 spot, ever.

Crawford needs to stick his neck out by moving up to 147, fighting the likes of Keith Thurman, Adrien Broner, Errol Spence Tim Bradley, Shawn Porter and Danny Garcia. Since it’s not likely that Crawford will get any of those guys to fight him due to them being with Al Haymon aside from Bradley, then It might require that Crawford take on some junior middleweights and middleweights to get him the opposition that will make him a bigger name.

I’m not sure that Crawford would be open to fighting a good fighter from the 154lb division like the Charlo brothers or Demetrius Andrade. Further still, I don’t know if those are fights that can be made by his promoter Bob Arum. Never the less, Crawford can get some junior middleweights and middleweights to fight him. That’s what I think Crawford will need to do for him to become a huge #1 pound-for-pound star. Believe me, Crawford is not going to become the No.1 guy fighting Postol or Ruslan Provodnikov. It’s going to take fights against welterweights, junior middleweights and middleweights to accomplish that task.

My guess is Crawford’s next fight will be against either Provodnikov or John Molina. Whichever he doesn’t fight next, he’ll l likely be fighting in his fight after that. I’m sorry, but I don’t rate Molina or Provodnikov as being good enough to further Crawford’s career. Those guys were just involved in a last chance saloon type of match. It doesn’t make sense for Crawford to be fighting either of them. He should be fighting better opposition if he wants to become a major star. I wouldn’t be surprised if Crawford winds up fighting Provodnikov or Molina two or three times for lack of opponents. We’ve seen that kind of stuff before with Top Rank match-making.

Crawford sees it as a good thing that he’s fighting on HBO PPV against Postol, but it really isn’t, because that just means fewer eyeballs are going to see Crawford fight. That’s not good. If you’re trying to become a major star, you want to be fighting on regular HBO or Showtime so that the boxing fans can see you and start liking you enough to want to pay to see you fight. But when go into PPV before boxing fans have seen you enough, then it’s like putting the cart in front of the horse. It makes no sense. Crawford’s fight against Postol will be lucky if it brings in 50,000 pay-per-view buys in my opinion. That’s not good, because only a small number of homes will likely see that fight.