Viktor Postol talks about loss to Crawford

By Boxing News - 07/24/2016 - Comments

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By Patrick McHugh: Former WBC light welterweight champion Viktor Postol says he kind of got away from his game plan against WBO light welterweight champion Terence “Bud” Crawford (29-0, 25 KOs) after being knocked down two times by him in round five last Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Crawford won the fight by a 12 round unanimous decision. It wasn’t pretty but he did the job and got the ‘W.’

Postol says he wants a rematch against Crawford in the near future. However, it’s unlikely that fight will happen unless Top Rank promoter Bob Arum has no real options for opponents for the two.

Arum likes to do repetitive rematches, so it’s quite possible that Postol could get a number of rematches against Crawford if he can get back on the winning track after this. Arum would look bad if he puts them back in with each other straightaway though.

Up until round five, Postol felt he was doing well in pressuring Crawford and forcing him to react. After the two knockdowns, Postol says he began to take more chances due to him trying to get back what he lost in the two knockdowns. This enabled the counter-punching Crawford to take advantage of his aggressiveness by landing some nice punches to win most of the remaining rounds of the fight.

“I was following the plan the first four rounds, and it was working pretty well,” said Postol to Figthhub.com. “Pressure and using the jab, attacking him aggressively. But after the fifth round, the knockdowns happened, and I started risking it more, because I knew I had to kind of get that back. Maybe where I risked it, it created some problems for me.”

The fight appeared to be even after four rounds. I thought it was pretty close, as Postol was landing jabs and Crawford looked afraid to throw anything. However, after the fifth round, Crawford became emboldened to land occasional pot shots while moving around the ring. He discovered that Postol was too slow to take advantage of his height and reach the way that some fighters do.

Crawford still didn’t do much on offense for the remaining rounds of the fight, as he wasn’t willing to attack in an aggressive enough way to land anything of substance. Crawford did go on the attack in round 12 after getting hit with a number of hard shots from Postol. There still wasn’t much action in the round despite the brief bit of aggressiveness from Crawford.

“It wasn’t comfortable for me. It’s a fight. He was moving a lot, and that didn’t really let me sit down on the punches,” said Postol. “The jab just didn’t work that well. He was moving well. He didn’t let me engage with the jab. That was probably part of the plan, and it worked. The first knockdown, I don’t feel I was hurt. I think I just lost balance, but it’s alright. The second knockdown, I was just getting anxious. I started really coming forward, and he caught me coming in. That was a real knockdown. He got me there. I just started coming forward too much.”

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The only way to deal with movement like the kind that Crawford was using was to go all out and throw flurries at him. Postol wasn’t going to beat Crawford by slowly following him and throwing one punch at a time. You can’t beat a counter puncher that way. You beat a counter puncher by jumping on them and turning it into an unconventional brawl of nonstop punches. Counter punchers don’t react well to that kind of fighting. That’s why fighters like Gennady Golovkin does so well against counter punchers. He just jumps on them and forces them to brawl. Postol looked like he didn’t have the confidence or the wherewithal to fight like that against Crawford until round 12.

When Postol finally did go on the attack in the 12th, he got the better of Crawford and him looking vulnerable and uncomfortable with the shots he was getting hit with. Postol did very well in the 12th round and showed how future opponents can beat Crawford. You beat him by going after him a messy all out manner. Postol doesn’t have the background to fight like that. His trainer Freddie Roach is going to need to teach him how to fight like that in the future because his opponents from this point forward will be looking to do the same thing Crawford did to beat him by moving nonstop for 12 rounds.

“I made a decision to kind of try anything and risk it, probably, like, the 10th or 11th round, but it didn’t work for me. I wasn’t able to do it,” said Postol. “He’s fast. Great foot movement, he moves very well.”