By Chris Williams: For the right kind of money, Terence Crawford would be willing to move down three pounds to fight super featherweight Vasyl Lomachenko at 137 pounds, according to his trainer Brian McIntyre. The money would have to be good though. Both fighters are promoted by Top Rank, so there wouldn’t be a problem making the fight if there were interest from Lomachenko’s side.
Top Rank boss Bob Arum has spoken of matching Lomachenko and Crawford up against each other. Lomachenko will likely get a shot at Manny Pacquiao in 2017. Crawford is in a tough situation if he can’t get someone like Lomachenko. It doesn’t look like Crawford will ever fight Pacquiao. Crawford can probably forget about fights against Al Haymon fighters like Adrien Broner, Danny Garcia, Errol Spence Jr. or Keith Thurman.
Crawford is friends with Tim Bradley, so he’s not an option. Other than Jessie Vargas and Lomachenko, Crawford might not have a lot of options for big fights in the future.
McIntyre said to RingTV.com this about Crawford being willing to fight Lomachenko:
“If they put $10 million to make 137 we’re going to make 137,” McIntyre said. “We’re going to make 137. But I know it’s not going to happen.” Added McIntyre, “Terence would beat the (expletive) out of Lomachenko. He too damn small.”
I doubt that a fight between Lomachenko and Crawford can take place without a rehydration clause. Crawford reportedly rehydrated to 157lbs for his recent fight against Viktor Postol. If Lomachenko fought Crawford, he’d likely be giving away 20 pounds of weight. That would make the fight a total farce. Crawford needs to move up to welterweight already and do whatever. I guess a fight against Pacquiao would be out of the question.
Crawford could wait for Pacquiao to retire and then go after the vacant WBO belt after he gives it up. If Arum steers Crawford in the direction of Thurman or Spence, he could wind up losing to both of them. Those guys are big punchers, and Crawford hasn’t had his chin tested since he was staggered by former featherweight champion Yuriorkis Gamboa. If Gamboa was able to hurt Crawford, then just imagine what Spence and Thurman would do to him.
McIntyre is talking about Crawford fighting on HBO PPV in the future against the right opponent. In looking at the contenders in the 140lb division, I can’t think of any of them that would be big enough names for him to fight against on PPV. Broner isn’t going to fight him. Ricky Burns vs. Crawford isn’t PPV worthy in the U.S. That’s a probably an even worse fight than Crawford vs. Postol, which is said to have brought in 50,000 buys on HBO. Those are not good numbers for buys.
Crawford’s best option is for him to forget about Lomachenko and move up to 147, and then wait and see if Arum can match him against one of Haymon’s fighters. If Crawford only fights Arum’s fighter Jessie Vargas or Brandon Rios, those are not going to be big fights. Crawford needs to take on the likes of Broner, Danny Garcia, Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter or Errol Spence. Like I said, I don’t think those guys will be matched against him. But even if Crawford did fight them, I think he’d likely lose to most of them. He could probably beat Danny Garcia, but it wouldn’t be an easy fight and it might not be worth anything if Garcia gets beaten by Thurman in March.
If Crawford really wants a big fight, then he should be open to fighting junior middleweights and middleweights like the Charlo brothers, Demetrius Andrade, Erislandy Lara, Daniel Jacobs and Gennady Golvovkin. I think Crawford might need to do what Paul Williams did when he couldn’t get fights at 147. Williams moved up to 154 to find guys to fight him. I think Crawford might need to move up two weight classes from 140 to 154 to get fights.
Crawford needs to focus on the task at hand this Saturday night in defending his WBC/WBO light welterweight titles against John Molina Jr. (29-6, 23 KOs) at the CenturyLink Arena in Omaha, Nebraska. HBO will be televising the fight. It’s not a great fight even though Molina is ranked #1 WBA and #2 WBO at 140. The fact that Molina is ranked highly despite losing 3 out of his last 4 fights shows you how weak the light welterweight division is at the moment.