By Chris Williams: Jermell Charlo took a shot at Terence Crawford this week, pointing out that he hasn’t “fought in the big leagues” during his long 15-year professional career until finally on the verge of facing his first high-caliber opponent Errol Spence Jr on July 29th.
Charlo says Crawford (39-0, 30 KOs) has fought a bunch of “old” guys during his career to get him to where he is today. The match-making done by Crawford’s promoters has kept him from building a large fan base, which is a shame because he’s almost 36 and doesn’t have much more time left.
On paper, Crawford’s best opponent during his career was Shawn Porter, but he fought him when he was essentially done, having been battered by Yordenis Ugas and Spence.
Whatever inspiration Porter had for fighting, it appeared gone after his loss to Spence in 2019. After that defeat, he went through the motions and was pretty much half-stunned when he fought Craword.
Some would say that Crawford is an example of the new generation of fighter, a guy that has been maneuvered like a chess piece by his former promoters at Top Rank, steered carefully to put him in ideal spots to win three division world titles and to preserve his unbeaten record.
“I ain’t going to say he’s fought nobody, but come on. These people were old,” said Jermell Charlo to ESNEWS about Terence Crawford’s weak resume.
“Amir Khan didn’t want no more smoke. S–k like that was going on. They put that little Russian [Egidijus Kavaliauskas] in front of him [Crawford], and he got clocked.
“Jump to the big leagues with the PBC gang. You know who’s running boxing right now, who’s paying the big checks,” said Charlo.
Now on the wrong side of 30, Crawford is taking on his first game fish, and he might be too old to get the job done for deep sea fishing. Crawford has been fishing for minnows his entire career and is not ready for Spence.
“I’m going into the fight from a 50-50 standpoint. My reason why is besides the obvious that they’re both high-level fighters, I’m looking at the coaching system and they both have a very good [coaches],” said trainer Malik Scott to Fighthype when asked about his prediction on the Errol Spence Jr vs. Terence Crawford fight.
“I favor more Spence’s coaching system. I’m very big on Derrick and how he go about his training, the way he go about his
system, and the way he’s zoned in on fundamentals.
“He believes in keeping everything simple. He doesn’t do an overhaul of things, and what I love the most about him is everything I see Spence doing on the pads, that same system gets transferred into
fighting,” said Scott.
