Mayweather says Crawford will have problems with Pacquiao

By Boxing News - 11/26/2015 - Comments

floyd3By Chris Williams: If WBO 140 pound champion Terence Crawford (27-0, 19 KOs) thinks it’s going to be easy for him to beat former 8 division world champion Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs), super star Floyd “Money” Mayweather Jr. wants to wake Crawford up to reality that it won’t be an easy fight for him.

Mayweather points out that he made it look easy beating Pacquiao because of his incredible boxing skills. Mayweather sees it as being a much more difficult task for the 28-year-old Crawford. Mayweather notes that Crawford’s best win of his career was against a smaller Yuriorkis Gamboa last year.

Gamboa staggered Crawford at point in the fight, and had his way with him in the first four rounds. Mayweather says that Pacquiao is bigger and more powerful than Gamboa, and because of that it’ll be a much more difficult fight.

“If Terence Crawford happens to fight Manny Pacquiao, I want to let him know that it’s not going to be easy. Even though I know I made it look easy, it’s not going to be easy,” Mayweather said to Fighthype.com.

Crawford is seen to be the leading candidate to get the fight against Pacquiao. 83-year-old Top Rank promoter Bob Arum says that Crawford, Tim Bradley and Amir Khan are the final three candidates for Pacquiao’s final fight of his career on April 9th next year.

Arum says that he hopes that Khan doesn’t get selected by Pacquiao because he doesn’t promote him. If you eliminate Khan from the selection process then that leaves Crawford and Bradley. Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach is saying that it’s now down to just Crawford and Bradley for Pacquiao’s next fight.

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Roach says he wants Pacquiao to fight Crawford next, which probably makes Arum very happy, because he might have an extremely difficult time trying to sell a third fight between Pacquiao and Bradley. Few people have much interest in watching Bradley get trotted out again by Arum to fight Pacquiao again. That would be like Arum announcing that Pacquiao will be fighting Brandon Rios again. As bad as one-sided as the Pacquiao-Bradley fight was in 2014, you can make an argument that Arum would have to pay the boxing fans to want to see a third fight

“The mother [expletive] can fight,” Mayweather said about Pacquiao. “He’s a lot better than what I thought he was…Terence Crawford got to realize that Pacquiao is bigger and stronger than Yuriorkis Gamboa, and he hits harder.”

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Crawford will have an advantage in that Pacquiao will have been out of the ring for 11 months if he chooses to face Crawford in April of next year. Pacquiao last fought in May of this year in a 12 round decision loss to Mayweather. Pacquiao suffered a torn right rotator cuff before the fight, and he made the injury worse by fighting with the injury.

Pacquiao has since had surgery to repair the injury, and supposed the surgery was a success. But in coming back from a torn rotator cuff, you normally would like to see a fighter take two or three tune-up fights afterwards before you put them into a potentially difficult fight.

It’s senseless to have a fighter face a real serious test in their first fight back after a torn rotator cuff. You don’t see baseball pitchers being inserted into the starting lineup to pitch a 9 inning game in their first stint back from rotator cuff surgery. I don’t know what to think about Arum and Pacquiao in them choosing not to take one or two tune-ups. It’s like they’re asking for trouble.

If this was a military ship that had been overhauled, you wouldn’t send it back onto the ocean without testing it out near the base in case something went wrong. With the way that Pacquiao is being put back immediately into a potentially dangerous fight, it gives the appearance that money is the priority rather than safety.

If Pacquiao wants to end his career after his next fight, then he should just take an easy fight for his next fight in order to keep from taking a beating, because he’s not likely going to be 100 percent with him coming off of an injury like this without having taken a tune-up fight.



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