Terence Crawford got the bad news today of the WBC stripping him of his super middleweight title due to his failure to pay the $300,000 sanctioning fee after capturing the belt on September 13th.
WBC Finally Loses Patience
Crawford (42-0, 31 KOs) was given opportunities to keep his WBC belt, as the sanctioning body reduced its sanctioning fee of 3% to 0.6% from his giant $50 million purse that he received for the Canelo fight, Alvarez’s ‘Fight of the Century’ on September 13th, reports the Guardian.
Mbilli–Sheeraz Ordered Next
The WBC has ordered a fight between interim 168-lb champion Christian Mbilli and #2 Hamzah Sheeraz for the vacant title.
Crawford reportedly was given repeated notifications from the WBC and opted not to pay. Bud had 81 days to pay the money, but he waited until the last day. As such, the WBC finally ran out of patience and stripped him of his belt today. That takes some of the prestige out of a rematch between Crawford and Canelo, if there is one.
Canelo’s Road Gets Harder
The Mexican superstar wanted to recapture his undisputed super middleweight championship from Terence. Now, he can’t. He’d only capture three of his old belts with a victory, and would still need to take a risky fight to round up the WBC strap against the winner of the Mbilli vs. Sheeraz fight.
The WBC also made #4 Lester Martinez the mandatory challenger for the Mbilli-Sheeraz fight. So, it’s questionable whether Canelo would even have the opportunity to fight for that belt if he were to try to win back all his old titles.
Fighting the winner could prove to be even more difficult for Canelo than facing the aging, defensive-minded 38-year-old Crawford. Mbilli and Sheeraz are young, hit hard, and would push a fast pace against Alvarez.
The WBC made their announcement of Crawford’s stripping of his 168-lb belt today, December 3rd, at the WBC’s annual convention in Bangkok, Thailand. WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman confirmed this.
There was also a sanctioning fee that Crawford didn’t pay for his fight against WBA junior middleweight champion Israil Madrimov on August 3, 2024. That was also a WBC 154-lb title eliminator.