By Dan Ambrose: After last Saturday’s less than crowd-pleasing performance in beating Viktor Postol, WBC/WBO light welterweight champion Terence Crawford (29-0, 20 KOs) has a lot of question marks about him and whether he’s got the mindset to become the new face of boxing. That’s what Crawford wants, and that’s obviously what his promoters at Top Rank want to see him become.
The fastest way for Crawford to become a pay-per-view attraction is for him to start knocking out all of his opponents. It wasn’t promising to see Crawford taking it easy last Saturday night against Postol after knocking him down twice in round five. If that had been middleweight star Gennady Golovkin that had knocked Postol down twice in the 5th round, you can bet that he would have been looking to finish him off in the 6th.
Golovkin wouldn’t have gotten on his bike, stuck out his tongue, and ran from Postol for the remainder of the fight. Crawford wants to become the next PPV attraction, but the simple fact of the matter is he doesn’t fight the way that he needs to for him to make the jump to the next level. The sport already has too many runners in non-PPV fights. They don’t need a runner as a PPV attraction. Fans can see those types of fighters on regular cable.
“I just stick to what I know: boxing,” said Crawford after the fight when asked why he didn’t go for the knockout of Postol.
Top Rank has an aging star in Manny Pacquiao, who has maybe two fights left in him at best. Top Rank has a lot of good fighters in their stable, but what they don’t have is someone that can step in and take the reins from Pacquiao as the next pay-per-view attraction. Once Pacquiao is gone, the money stream that we’ve seen for Top Rank will slow to a trickle. Crawford is the best option Top Rank has to become a PPV star in the future, but for that to happen, he’s going to need to change the way he fights.
Top Rank promoter Bob Arum needs to have a long conversation with Crawford to let him know what he needs to do for him to become a PPV attraction and the ‘new face in boxing,’ because if he has too many more of the type of performances that we saw last Saturday night, I think he might have a hard time having his fights televised on HBO, period.
Crawford fought like Guillermo Rigondeaux last Saturday, and I can’t remember the last time I saw Rigondeaux fighting on HBO. If HBO is fine with Crawford running around the ring for 12 rounds, then they should try and get Rigondeaux back on the network as well because he fights in the exact same way. If it’s good enough for Crawford to move around in circles for 12 rounds, then it should be good enough for Rigondeaux as well. Both fighters have nearly the same KO percentage. Rigondeux is at 65%, while Crawford is at 69%.
At this point, I’m not sure that Crawford can change his basic boxing chemistry to become more like Golovkin in order to become a PPV fighter. Some fighters just don’t have it in them to put their head down and go after their opponents to try and shoot for a knockout. Some fighters don’t want to get hit, and they prefer to box and counter punch all night long rather than stick their neck out and look for a KO. Floyd Mayweather Jr. was one of the rare exceptions in becoming a PPV star despite not being a knockout fighter. He was different. Mayweather was able to become a PPV attraction because he was so blazing fast of hand.
It was entertaining to watch Mayweather. Crawford isn’t like Mayweather. His hand speed is good, but not blazing fast by any means. There are many fighters that are faster than Crawford and they’re not PPV stars. There are many fighters that are willing to entertain the boxing fans to go for knockouts, and they’re not PPV stars.
For Crawford to become a PPV star, he needs to set himself apart from the other fighters who aren’t PPV attractions. It’s not enough for Top Rank to campaign for Crawford to become the next PPV star by sticking him on PPV before the boxing public is ready to buy his fights. Crawford needs to show that he can be an exciting fighter, and he can start by trying to score knockouts each time he fights.
Arum didn’t have much to say to the media after the Crawford-Postol fight last Saturday night. You have to wonder whether Arum purposely decided not to talk to the media because of them potentially grilling him about his thoughts on the dull Crawford vs. Postol fight. I could picture more than a few media members asking Arum, ‘So do you still think Crawford can become the next PPV star after the boring performance he put in against Postol.’ I would hope that Arum would keep his cool under the withering questions from the media, but I have a feeling that it would cause him to sound off and let the media know what he thought of their questions.
Watching Crawford circle the ring endlessly against Postol last Saturday night, looking to counter any attempts from him at engaging was about as interesting as watching paint dry. It was a purely defensive performance from Crawford aside from a brief bit of action here and there. We saw a spark of offense from Crawford in the 5th and again in the 12th. On both occasions, it was Postol that initiated the action rather than Crawford. If the ideal fighter is someone like Golovkin, then Crawford’s performance was more liken to Willie Monroe Jr. or Martin Murray. The question is would be interested in paying to see those guys fight on PPV? I think not. The average boxing fans want to see action, not movement and pure defense. They want to see exciting knockouts. They don’t want to see a fighter running around the ring for 12 rounds, sticking his tongue out at his opponents because he’s not fast enough to catch up to him.