By Dan Ambrose: WBO 140lb champion Terence Crawford (27-0, 19 KOs) will be defending his WBO title against the struggling 32-year-old Hank Lundy (26-5-1, 13 KOs) on HBO Championship Boxing on February 27 at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Also on the card is Felix Verdejo (19-0, 14 KOs) fighting William Silva (23-0, 14 KOs) in the battle of unbeaten lightweights. Verdejo, 22, will have his WBO Latino title on the line for the fight. Verdejo could be challenging for a world title later in 2016 against WBO lightweight champion Terry Flanagan.
Crawford, 28, did not have many choices for this title defense. He wanted to fight Manny Pacquiao, but he chose Tim Bradley for his next opponent. Crawford’s promoters at Top Rank attempted to get Mauricio Herrera, and Ruslan Provodnikov, but those fights failed to happen. Viktor Postol is someone that Top Rank has in their stable, but it looks like the two of them are going to go in separate directions rather than face each other.
That’s a shame though because that would a fight that would increase Crawford’s popularity if he won. Of course, it’s also a fight that could ruin Crawford’s progress to the stardom if he were to lose or look badly against Postol, and there would be a very good chance we’d see that. Crawford did not look good in his fight against Breidis Prescott in 2013. Crawford got the win, but he was hit a lot and many of the first five rounds appeared to be won by Prescott by him outworking Crawford. I had the fight scored a draw.
Lundy’s career has hit a recent tough patch with him losing two out of his last three fights. Lundy suffered losses to Mauricio Herrera and Thomas Dulorme in 2014 and 2015. Crawford beat Dulorme last year by a 6th round knockout to win the WBO title. Lundy still has fast hands and good punching power. The problem he’s just a lightweight and really shouldn’t be fighting light welterweights like Crawford. There’s likely going to be a weight difference between the two of these guys, because Crawford rehydrates to the low 150s.
What’s surprising here is that the World Boxing Organization is sanctioning the Crawford-Lundy fight, because the WBO has been a stickler recently in wanting their champions to face top 15 contenders that they have ranked. Lundy isn’t ranked in the top 15 by the WBO. This is not good because Crawford’s last opponent Dierry Jean was a lightweight as well.
If Crawford is going to be defending his titles against lightweights repeatedly, it might be in his best interest to move back down to that division, because he is not making any headway at 140 in terms of fighting big names and having any significant fights.
There’s no point in Crawford fighting at light welterweight if he’s not going to be facing guys like Herrera, Provodnikov, Postol, Adrien Broner, and Lucas Matthysse. The division is already a duller one now that Danny Garcia and Lamont Peterson have moved up in weight to fight at welterweight, but it’s worse for Crawford because he’s not even fighting the few names that are left behind. Instead, he’s fighting lightweights.
It’s unclear how much longer Crawford has on his contract with Top Rank, but it would be a pity if the remainder of his contract sees him only fighting lightweights or fringe contender light welterweights.
If all Crawford is going to get is fights against guys like Dierry Jean, Dulorme, Lundy and Beltran, then he might want to look in another direction when his contract runs out with Top Rank in the future, especially if he starts fighting rematches against these limited fighters. That would tell me that Top Rank doesn’t have options for him to get bigger fights.
That would be disappointing if Crawford stays stuck at this level and finds himself in the recycled fight circuit that we’ve seen Manny Pacquiao at for the past seven years of his career. Crawford doesn’t have much to show for himself in the last couple of years of his career other than one fight against Yuriorkis Gamboa. The rest of the fights were against lesser names. Even the Gamboa fight was Crawford fighting an aging small fighter who belongs at featherweight rather than lightweight. Gamboa only moved up in weight to get bigger paydays rather than him needing to move out of the featherweight division.
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