By Chris Williams: Making his second defense of his WBO light welterweight title, Terence Crawford (28-0, 20 KOs) toyed with #10 WBO Hank Lundy (26-6-1, 13 KOs) until getting serious with him in the 5th and stopping him in a fight televised by HBO Championship Boxing from Madison Square Garden in New York.
Crawford hurt Lundy with a hard right hand in the 5th and put him on the canvas in the corner. Moments later, Crawford finished Lundy off with a series of hard power shots that caused referee Steve Willis to step in and halt the fight at 2:09 of the round.
Lundy, 32, had a good first round in catching Crawford with a big right hand to the head. Crawford took the shot well, and came back to dominate the remainder of the fight.
“I knew how bad he was hurt when he stood back up, and I then just got him out of there,” Crawford said after the fight. “I put on a great statement. He’d never been stopped before.”
I wouldn’t call it a great statement. I could see someone like Adrien Broner or Viktor Postol giving Crawford a great deal of problems if they were in the ring tonight rather than the over-matched Lundy. Of course, we’re probably not going to see either of those fights. Crawford’s promoter Bob Arum could match him up with Postol if he wanted to, because he promotes the WBC light welterweight champion.
HBO should have said no to the Crawford-Lundy mismatch the moment Bob Arum threw it by them. If I was with HBO, I would have never blessed this mismatch. I would have laughed Arum out of the room or off the phone if he had thrown the idea by me. This wasn’t even good television. It was just a sick mismatch and you can tell mistakes where made in the people who agreed to this fight. If they had asked me whether to show the Crawford vs. Lundy fight, I would have said no way. I would have known that it’s a fight that isn’t even worth putting on. I could see Crawford getting a tidbit mismatch thrown to him if he had just had three or four difficult fights. Under those circumstances, you could give him a complimentary mismatch to pad his record with an payday. But Crawford has had three straight mismatches against Dierry Jean, Thomas Dulorme and Raymundo Beltran, and it’s time that he start fighting quality guys. This isn’t the time to enable him by letting him fight more fodder opposition for easy paydays. I would not have let the Crawford vs. Lundy mismatch be televised if it were up to me. I would have told Arum to go back to the drawing board until he finds someone that has a fighting chance at beating Crawford.
Crawford’s promoter Bob Arum needs to start putting him in with better opposition, because he’s slowed his career down with three straight mismatches against Lundy, Dierry Jean and Thomas Dulorme. Those three mismatches consumed a year of Crawford’s career without doing much to increase his popularity. Crawford needs a big money PPV fight against someone, but there’s no one that Arum can put him in with.
Manny Pacquiao is retiring after his April 9 fight against Tim Bradley. Arum could have a long talk with Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya to try and match Crawford against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. It would be a really tough fight for Crawford, but at least it would give him his first PPV fight. He might get beaten up a little, but I think it would help his career. Crawford has to do something because I don’t see him going anywhere fighting the guys that Arum is been feeding him.
Arum can’t just stick him in a PPV fight on HBO against one of the fodder opponents that he’s been finding for him, because I don’t think HBO would agree to it. They would know that you can’t see Crawford against Dierry Jean or Hank Lundy type opposition, and that’s all Arum seems capable of matching Crawford against right now. He’s just withering on the vine.
That’s why I think Crawford should jump up three divisions and look to face some middleweights like Amir Khan is doing. I would say that Crawford should fight some junior middleweights, but Haymon has the best 154lb contenders in his stable and I don’t think he’s going to do business with Arum. Crawford needs to bulk up and fight someone good at middleweight like Canelo, Miguel Cotto or David Lemieux. Golden Boy has Lemieux and Canelo in their stable, so Arum could potentially match Crawford against one or both of those guys.
Arum recently said he’d like to match Crawford against 42-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez. I wish Arum a lot of luck trying to make that fight, because I see Marquez turning him down in a split second. Marquez wants a big name at the end of this year against Cotto, not a little name like Crawford.
Never the less, I don’t see the 84-year-old Arum making that fight. I don’t think he wants to lose one of his champions. With Crawford and Postol both holding down world titles, Arum would probably be cutting off a revenue stream to his Top Rank company if he matched them up, because the loser would no longer be a world champion and might become devalued because of the loss. Arum can’t match Crawford against Broner because he’s with Al Haymon and the two rarely work with one another.
The best thing for Crawford to do is to vacate the WBO 140lb title and move up to 147 to try and get whatever fights he can. I don’t know who he can fight though. The WBC and WBA champions Danny Garcia and Keith Thurman are both with Haymon, so I doubt that Crawford will get a shot at either of those guys. IBF champion Kell Brook is a possibility for Crawford, but he’s going to need to defend his title against Errol Spence Jr. very soon, and the chances are that Brook will lose that fight. Spence is with Haymon too. Crawford’s best is to fight his close friend Tim Bradley, and then go after the WBO title, which will be fought over on April 9 by Jessie Vargas and Sadam Ali.
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