By Chris Williams: Terence Crawford (29-0, 20 KOs) is expected back inside the ring on November 12 to defend his WBC/WBO light welterweight titles against an opponent still to be determined in his own hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that Crawford might not wind up with a good opponent for lack of names that are willing to fight him. Crawford, 28, was very happy recently after beating WBC 140lb champion Viktor Postol by a 12 round unanimous decision in their unification match last month on July 23 in their fight on HBO pay-per-view at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Crawford’s fight will likely be televised by HBO.
Crawford might have thought that he was going to be able to take that win and use it as a springboard to get bigger fights against the likes of Manny Pacquiao or Danny Garcia. Unfortunately, that reality does not exist at this time, and it may never exist. The more likely scenario for Crawford is he goes back to fighting the Dierry Jeans of the 140lb division and fails to take advantage of his win over Postol to get bigger fights in the boxing world.
“November 12th, Omaha, that’s the word,” said Crawford’s trainer Brian McIntyre to ringtv.com.“[expletive], we don’t know. We are trying to find someone,” McIntyre said when asked by Michael Woods who Crawford will be fighting next. “No, Team Orozco wants nothing to do with Crawford.”
This is exactly what I thought would happen after Crawford beat Postol. Instead of going forward to bigger fights, Crawford finds himself in a situation where he may need to stay where he’s at in terms of the kind of opposition he’s been facing. Crawford’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank can throw some money at one of the contenders or the other light welterweight champions, but I doubt that’s going to lure them into taking the fight with him.
The basic problem is that there’s not a lot of huge money to make fighting Crawford, so the risk isn’t worth the reward of taking the fight. Also, Crawford has a style of fighting where he moves a lot when he feels there’s a threat. While some boxing fans say that Crawford isn’t a runner, but his constant movement comes out to be about the same thing.
There’s not a lot of high quality pressure fighters in the 140lb division that are good at chasing after mobile fighters like Crawford. If a top contender has the options of fighting someone that stands in place like WBA champion Ricky Burns or a runner/mover like Crawford, then who do you think they’re going to fight? It’s obvious that they’re going to select Burns. Crawford’s style of fighting is like Guillermo Rigondeaux’s, but he goes a step further by switching stances constantly and moving much more.
Rigondeaux doesn’t change stances and he definitely doesn’t move around the ring like Crawford. If you look at Rigondeaux’s fights, he’s mostly standing flat-footed, jabbing and looking to counter his opponents. What’s interesting is that Rigondeaux’s fights are no longer televised on HBO, but Crawford’s are? It just makes you wonder why?
I rate Rigondeaux as a more exciting fighter than Crawford, and yet his fights aren’t televised by HBO. Did Rigondeaux get an undeserved bad rep after beating Nonito Donaire and Joseph Agbecko? If happened to Rigondeaux, it could very well soon happen to Crawford as well if he doesn’t stop moving so much in his fights and if he doesn’t start fighting and making it interesting for the boxing fans to watch him.