By Chris Williams: Three months have gone by since Terence Crawford’s last fight in December and he STILL doesn’t have an opponent picked out for his first fight in 2020. One quarter of 2020 is now gone, and Crawford still doesn’t have an opponent scheduled.
Crawford, 32, is coming off of a 9th round knockout win over Egidijus Kavaliauskas on December 14, and he needs a MAJOR upgrade over him to interest the fans. 2019 was arguably a disappointment as far as the opposition that Crawford fought. Instead of getting the big-name marquee fighters, Crawford was stuck defending against Amir Khan and Kavaliauskas.
Putting the Khan on ESPN pay-per-view wasn’t a popular move by Top Rank, as there weren’t a lot of boxing fans in the U.S that was enthused enough about this mismatch to want to order it. It might have made sense to put the fight on pay-per-view 10 years ago when Khan’s career was still thriving, but not now with it belly-up, and gone. That was a move by Top Rank that’s to second-guess.
Crawford vs. Kell Brook possible
Kell Brook (39-2, 27 KOs) is believed to be the frontrunner for Crawford’s next fight, but that’s a pick that likely won’t interest U.S fans any more than Khan did. Brook, 33, abandoned the 147-lb division after his 11th round knockout loss three years ago to Errol Spence Jr. in May 2017, and his last three fights have taken place at 154.
If push comes to shove, Brook can probably drain himself down to 147 to fight Crawford, but he’ll likely be so weakened from the ordeal that he won’t be able to put up much of a fight. The product for the U.S boxing fans will be a bad one if Brook looks like a physical wreck when he enters the ring to face Crawford.
It’s likely that Top Rank will make Crawford-Brook a pay-per-view fight, which won’t make American fans happy. If it’s a great fight, of course, the fans won’t mind as much, but that’s not likely to happen if Brook is weight drained. Ideally, Crawford should give up the WBO strap, and move up to 154 to face Brook.
At this point, fans wouldn’t career if Crawford dumped the WBO strap, because it’s just meaningless trophy that he carries with him into the ring. He doesn’t need the WBO belt to validate him as a fighter because he’s already well known enough to attract a certain amount of fans for his fights without the title.
Options not great for Crawford if he can’t get Brook
If Top Rank isn’t able to put together the Crawford vs. Brook fight, then Crawford’s next opponent will likely be picked from this list:
- Sergey Lipinets
- Jaron Ennis
- Mikka Shonena
- Mikael Zewski
- Custio Calyton
- Michael McKinson
- Freddy Kiwitt
- Luther Clay
- Yuki Beppu
- Nursultan Zhangabayev
Lipinets (16-1, 12 KOs) is easily the best of the bunch, but he’s already been beaten by Mikey Garcia in 2018 in a one-sided 12 round decision. Moreover, Lipinets is already scheduled to fight Kudratillo Abdukakhorov (17-0, 9 KOs) on May 16 for the interim International Boxing Federation welterweight title. Lipinets isn’t going to give up on the opportunity to win a portion of the IBF title just so he can face Crawford as a challenger. That’s not going to happen.
The rest of those names are just as obscure as Crawford’s last opponent Kavaliauskas. After that fight, Crawford needs a name guy for him to increase his popularity, and it would look bad if another unknown is trotted out as his opponent.
Terence must raise his profile to get Spence fight
While Crawford’s promoters at Top Rank are hopeful that IBF/WBC welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr. will face WBO champion Crawford (36-0, 27 KOs) in a unification fight in 2020, that would seem to be just wishful thinking on their part. Spence’s trainer Derrick James already made it clear recently that Crawford needs to raise his profile by fighting better opposition because he sees its a dumb fight between him and Spence.
It won’t make money right now due to Crawford’s lack of popularity. Given the fact that many of the top names at 147 are with PBC, Crawford is in a bad position to increase his profile. Crawford is basically stuck in an untenable position where he can’t get the fights that he wants to raise his profile due to the politics, and the basic problems that occur when fighters compete on different networks.
Crawford can move up to 154 to get more fights
An easy solution to the problem would be for Crawford to hustle fights by floating between divisions the way that Paul Williams used to do. Williams was in the same position Crawford is in now with him unable to get the big names to fight him at 147. So what Williams did was move up to 154 and 160, and he was able to get important fights against Sergio Martinez, Erislandy Lara, and Ronald ‘Winky’ Wright.
Crawford could do the same, but he obviously would be at higher risk at 154 and 160. They hit harder, and he might not dominate like he is right now at 147. Like Williams, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Crawford get knocked cold every now and then, but there would still be great opportunities for him to raise his profile. Spence is clearly going to end up at 154 in the near future, and Crawford would be waiting there for him when he eventually arrives.
Errol in no position to fight Crawford in 2020
Spence is coming off of a car crash from last October, and he’s not going to face Crawford in his first fight back. That’s a waste of time for Top Rank and Crawford to hope for that scenario. Maybe if this was the 1930s, we could see something like that, but not in this era. Spence (26-0, 21 KOs) is too valuable of a fighter to drag himself out from crash involving his Ferrari to fight Crawford.
“It’s too soon after his injury,” said Top Rank president Todd DuBoef to skysports.com bout Spence to face Crawford in the first half of 2020. “He has other options – Josh Taylor or Jose Ramirez are compelling matches too,” Duboef said of Crawford.
Spence was hoping to fight Crawford before his car crash, but that accident has changed everything. We don’t know when Spence is going to return to the ring, and there’s a chance that he might not be the same person. His speech sounds different in his interviews, and who knows if he’ll ever return to the same form he was before the crash.
Crawford unlikely to get Ramirez or Taylor in 2020
Ramirez and Taylor AREN’T options for Crawford in 2020. Those are guys that Crawford has a shot at fighting in 2021, but not this year. Taylor (16-0, 12 KOs) is defending his IBF/WBA light-welterweight belts against his IBF mandatory Apinun Khongsong (16-0, 13 KOs) on May 2 at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland. That fight will use up the first half of 2020.
For his part, WBC/WBO 140-lb champion Ramirez (25-0, 17 KOs) will be defending against his WBC mandatory Viktor Postol (31-2, 12 KOs) on May 9 at the Save Mart Arena in Fresno, California.
That fight was supposed to take place in Hainan, China on February 1, but it needed to be rescheduled due to the outbreak of the coronavirus in the country. However, even if the Ramirez-Postol fight had already taken place on February 1 and Ramirez came out as the winner, it’s unlikely that he would be Crawford’s next opponent.
Ramirez wants to unify the 140lb weight class, so he’s going to wait for the outcome of the May 2 fight between Taylor and Khongsong to face the winner.