Crolla says beating Linares will make him No.1 lightweight worldwide

By Boxing News - 01/04/2017 - Comments

Image: Crolla says beating Linares will make him No.1 lightweight worldwide

By Scott Gilfoid: Anthony Crolla (31-5-3, 13 KOs) will be looking to avenge his loss to Jorge Linares (41-3, 27 KOs) when he challenges him for his WBA World lightweight title on March 25 at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England. Crolla, 30, lost to Linares last September by a 12 round unanimous decision.

Linares captured Crolla’s WBA 135lb title in beating him by the scores of 115-114, 115-113 and 117-111. I saw the fight and had Linares winning comfortably by the score of 117-111. I thought the other two scores were ones that didn’t reflect how one-sided the fight was.

Linares dominated the fight until the later rounds when he suffered a hand injury. Crolla feels that there was very little to separate the two, and he thinks he can make the difference in the rematch.

What’s interesting here is that Crolla says that a win over the 31-year-old Linares will make him the best lightweight in the division. I don’t agree with that view. If Crolla beats Linares without controversy, which I kind of doubt that he will, then it will just make him a paper champion in my opinion. I don’t consider Linares as the best lightweight in the world. I rate Linares at No.10 in the lightweight division.

I see guys like Mikey Garcia (35-0, 29 KOs), Terry Flanagan and Dejan Zlaticanin as MUCH better fighters than Linares. As such, if Crolla beats Linares WITHOUT CONTROVERSY, then I think it makes him just a normal belt holder, but not the champion or anywhere near the best fighter in the lightweight division. Linares looks old and flawed in my opinion. He was always a flawed fighter even when he was younger. Now that Linares is about to turn 32, he’s slowed and starting to have injury problems. He’s even more flawed than he was before. The fact that Linares was able to beat Crolla handily last September with an injured hand shows you where Crolla is at in terms of talent. I’m just saying.

Crolla said this to skysports.com about his thoughts on him becoming the BEST lightweight in the division if he beats Linares on March 25:

“This is the chance to beat the best lightweight in the world and become the best lightweight in the world,” said Crolla. “You’ve only got to look at the scorecard. If I hadn’t been caught with that shot in a round that I was winning, it would’ve been a draw. It was that close I believe it is one I can win. There wasn’t a lot between us,” said Crolla.

I hate to break this to Crolla, but the fight wasn’t close between him and Linares. Crolla got dominated by an injured and aging fighter. That’s the sad part. The other sad part is that Crolla thinks he’ll be the best fighter in the lightweight division if he beats Linares. All I can think when I see Crolla talking about him being the best is he might not be following the sport closely enough to realize that there are A LOT more talented fighters than Linares in the division.

If Crolla hasn’t looked around and seen fighters like Mikey Garcia, Zlaticanin and Robert Easter Jr, then I can understand why he might think he would be the best lightweight if he gets past Linares. But if Crolla has seen those guys and he rates himself as better than all of them, then I feel sorry for him, because I don’t think he’s even in the same galaxy as them. We’re talking trillions of miles of distance between talents like those guys and a fighter like Crolla.

I rate the following lightweights as being MUCH BETTER fighters than Crolla and Linares:

Robert Easter Jr.

Mikey Garcia

Dejan Zlaticanin

Richard Commey

Terry Flanagan

Felix Verdejo

Luke Campbell

Yvan Mendy

Denis Shafikov

Raymundo Beltran

Micky Bey

Yuriorkis Gamboa

Mikey Garcia and WBC World lightweight champion Zlaticanin will be fighting on January 28 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. The winner of the Linares vs. Crolla II fight will be facing the Zlaticanin vs. Garcia winner in 2017. That should be an interesting outcome. I can already see the last man standing being Garcia though.

Crolla and Linares are good basic lightweights with decent talent, but I see the winner of their fight being destroyed by the winner of the Garcia vs. Zlaticanin fight. Of course, the winner of the Linares-Crolla fight doesn’t have to fight the Garcia-Zlaticanin fight if they don’t want to. That might be the wise thing for them do to, because I don’t see Crolla or Linares doing well at all against the likes of Mikey Garcia or Zlaticanin. I think they’d be punching bags for the two of them. I don’t care where the fight takes place. It could be in Manchester, and I still see Crolla getting blasted out by either of those guys.