Crawford calls out Danny Garcia

By Boxing News - 08/09/2016 - Comments

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By Chris Williams: Terence Crawford called out World Boxing Council welterweight champion Danny Garcia (32-0, 18 KOs) for a fight earlier on Monday. Crawford sent a message to the unbeaten Garcia on Twitter, saying that he just beat the fighter that he didn’t want to fight in Viktor Postol.

Crawford (29-0, 20 KOs) also told Garcia to have his father/trainer Angel Garcia to make the fight at 147. This is big news because it means that Crawford is willing to move up to welterweight and challenge Garcia for his WBC belt. I wonder what Crawford’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank thinks about that? Arum wants to match Crawford against his No.1 Top Rank stable fighter Manny Pacquiao, and I doubt that Arum would be agreeable to have Crawford risk all that by facing a guy with the kind of punching power that Danny Garcia possesses.

Garcia could change Crawford’s career with one big left hook to the head, destroying any hopes of a future fight against Pacquiao. Knowing Arum, a Crawford loss probably wouldn’t stop him from matching Crawford against Pacquiao anyway. After all, we saw Pacquiao face Brand Rios after he’d been recently beaten. It just means the Pacquiao vs. Crawford fight would likely bring in a lot fewer pay-per-view buys, but it would still be an in house Top Rank fight for Arum.

Crawford might be upset with Garcia’s dad Angel Garcia after his recent comments he made to Fighthype.com about him not being willing to waste his money on paying to see Crawford’s recent fight against Viktor Postol on July 23. Arum made the Crawford vs. Postol fight a pay-per-view fight on HBO, which was a controversial move because neither of these guys are PPV fighters. They’re just regular fighters with a few hardcore fans that know about them, but they’re unknowns when it comes to the many casual boxing fans.

It was a strange move on Arum’s part to make the Crawford-Postol fight a PPV match on HBO. I got the impression that Arum was just gambling and hoping that the fight brought in huge PPV numbers so that he could stick all of Crawford’s future fights on PPV. The fact that Arum or HBO still haven’t released the pay-per-view results from the Crawford vs. Postol fight leaves me wondering whether this was a disaster in terms of PPV numbers.

Here’s what Angel Garcia said about the Crawford vs. Postol fight to fighthype.com:
“Listen, I didn’t even watch that [expletive], man. I ain’t wasting my money. I ain’t wasting money. Listen, HBO should be embarrassed. Real champions [don’t get the same exposure as] make believe champions.”

Angel was just saying what many other boxing fans had been saying at the time about the Crawford-Postol fight not being a pay-per-view worthy fight to see. Angel used strong language to give his opinion, of course, but the basic thing is he felt the fight wasn’t a pay-per-view worthy fight. I’m sure that Danny Garcia would take the same kind of criticism from the boxing world if he was to turn around and announce that he’s fighting Postol on HBO or Showtime pay-per-view.

If Crawford is willing to fight Danny Garcia, then why isn’t he calling out Keith “One Time” Thurman, Shawn Porter, Kell Brook and Errol Spence Jr? Those are all high quality welterweights that he would get a lot of attention fighting. I don’t think Crawford could beat any of them because he’s too thin-boned to compete against those rugged welterweights. Crawford’s frame isn’t big enough to fight at welterweight in my view, and I don’t think it ever will be. I’m not sure where to rate Garcia in the top welterweight rankings, but I do believe he would be too much for Crawford. All it would take is one hard left hook from Garcia to change the entire course of the fight against Crawford. But I don’t think Crawford’s promoter Bob Arum would give the green light to letting him fight a brutal puncher like Garcia. I don’t think he would. I see Arum as saving Crawford for the Pacquiao fight. If the two of them face each other, my guess is Arum will try and turn it into a three to four fight series with the two of them exclusively facing each other in Top Rank fights for the next two years.