By Dan Ambrose: WBO light welterweight champion Terence Crawford (26-0, 18 KOs) is reportedly looking for an opponent for his next fight on either October 24th or November 7th in Omaha, Nebraska.
The options for Crawford are currently down to these fighters: Dierry Jean, Mauricio Herrera, Cesar Cuenca, or Antonio Orozco, according to Dan Rafael. Herrera would seem to be the least likely of the three to get the fight because he recently suffered two bad cuts in his victory over Hank Lundy. Those cuts likely won’t be healed properly by October or November when Crawford will be fighting next.
The southpaw Cuenca (48-0, 2 KOs) from Argentina would be an ideal opponent for Crawford if his promoters at Top Rank can lure Cuenca in taking the fight. He’s awfully close to tying boxing great Rocky Marciano’s record of 49-0, and he might not want to take on a slick southpaw like Crawford unless the money was really good.
Given that Crawford’s not a pay-per-view attraction as of yet, the money won’t be huge. That doesn’t mean that Top Rank couldn’t dig deep to find the money to get Cuenca to take the fight, but it’s not likely to happen. Unless it’s a sizable offer, you can expect Cuenca to go in another direction to defend his newly won IBF light welterweight title. Cuenca captured the IBF title, which previously was in the possession of Top Rank fighter Lamont Peterson, last Saturday night with a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision win over Ik Yang in Macau, China.
Cuenca surprised a lot of boxing fans with how good he looked. Before that fight, a lot of people had looked at Cuenca’s resume and saw that it was filled largely with unknown fighters from Argentina. However, Cuenca proved that he’s for real with his win over Yang. But he’s going to have to prove that he can beat better fighter than Yang if he really wants to make believers out of people.
Dierry Jean (29-1, 20 KOs) is also a possibility for Crawford to fight. He’s interested in taking the fight. However, he was recently beaten by IBF light welterweight champion Lamont Peterson, and that might be a turnoff for HBO.
If they’re going to green light a fight for their network, they’re not likely to be too eager to see Crawford facing a guy that was recently beaten like Dierry Jean. Despite the loss to Peterson, Jean has won his last four fights and moved to 135, where he looks solid. For Crawford, it would be more like a lateral move than a step up or a step down if he were to face Jean. In Crawford’s last fight, he stopped Thomas Dulorme in the 6th round last April. Jean is about on the same level as Dulorme, possibly a little lower.
“I would be very pleased for Dierry to get that opportunity. I believe he’s ready for that challenge,” promoter Camille Estephan said to ESPN.com. “Given the experience that he has acquired fighting Peterson, where we came close, and some other factors, I feel Dierry Jean is more than ready for the big fights.”
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