By Jack Tiernan: Jermell Charlo sent a warning to Terence Crawford this week to stay in his lane at 147 and avoid moving up to 154 to challenge him for his IBF/WBA/WBC junior middleweight titles.
For some reason, Jermell Charlo (34-1-1, 18 KOs) seems cool to the idea of facing Crawford at 154 for potentially all the belts. Jermell, 31, has a rematch with WBO 154lb champion Brian Castano on May 14th for the undisputed championship.
However, the Charlo vs. Castano II rematch winner will likely need to fight back-to-back mandatory defenses against Tim Tszyu [WBO] and Bakhram Murtazaliev [WBA] before they’ll be free to face Crawford.
Crawford is considering a move to 154
Recently, Crawford (38-0, 29 KOs) and his trainer Brian ‘BoMac’ McIntyre have been considering the option of going up in weight to try and become the undisputed champion at 154.
This would be a long-overdue kneejerk shift by Crawford, who holds the WBO welterweight title, in reaction to being ignored for many years by the PBC fighters like Errol Spence Jr, Keith Thurman, and Danny Garcia.
Even with Crawford no longer with Top Rank, he still doesn’t have any of the above welterweights looking to make a fight with him, and he and BoMac could be seeing the writing on the wall.
At 34, Crawford needs to go in the direction of what is possible rather than being excluded. When a person has hit the ceiling and is being blocked from rising up for promotion, it’s better to move on with any profession.
If Crawford and BoMac can’t get a shot at the winner of the April 16th unification fight between IBF/WBC welterweight champion Spence and WBA champion Yordenis Ugas, they could move up to 154.
As the WBO 147-lb champion, Crawford can petition the World Boxing Organization to install himself as the mandatory challenger for WBO 154-lb champion Brian Castano.
What that means is Crawford could get a shot at fighting the winner of the
Jermell Charlo warns Crawford
“Crawford, Y’all ain’t never seen no real s*** like this s*** here,” said Jermell Charlo on social media. “How about he do what’s best and go fight Errol Spence then! Shut up, take a little bit less money, be quiet, humble yourself, and fight Errol Spence — he a stud.
“Be the challenger sometimes. You ain’t worth s*** to me, for real.
@TwinCharlo shares his thoughts on @terencecrawford 👀👀 pic.twitter.com/5Z8UKpN5Gf
— SibbieBoxing (@SibbieBoxing) March 8, 2022
“You got [Jaron ‘Boots’] Ennis, you got [Danny] Garcia, you got [Keith] Thurman, you got people making a name for thyself in your own division.
“Sit your a** in your weight division and see if you can beat one of them because f**** with me, you’re going to get knocked the f*** out. I’m a knockout artist, baby,” said Jermell to Crawford.
BoMac says Crawford could go up to 154
“Maybe go up to 154 and get one of those guys up there and unify that title,” said trainer Briain ‘BoMac’ McIntyre to Behind The Gloves about the possibility of Crawford going up to junior middleweight to fight the winner of the Charlo vs. Brian Castano match.
Spence wants Crawford fight
“Definitely it’ll happen. We’ll see after this fight [Yordenis Ugas],” said Errol Spence Jr. to All Access Elite Boxing when asked about the possibility of him fighting Crawford.
“To my fault, it’s not something I’m going to talk about to the public and stuff like, ‘Oh, I need this, and he needs to do that.’ For me, as boxers, we got egos too,” said Spence on revealing what has proven to be an obstacle in the past to making a fight with Crawford.
“Somebody telling me that I need to do this or he telling me that I need to do this or I need to do that, that plays into the fight not happening [with Crawford].
“I just feel like it needs to happen behind closed doors. It’s something our teams have talked about and hopefully, the fight can be made. I definitely think it’s very promising and especially with me snatching this other belt [WBA] from Ugas. So we’ll see,” said Spence.
