Fans Shrug Off Crawford’s Retirement, Call It a Negotiation Play

Not all fans are concerned about Terence Crawford’s retirement announcement today. They’re treating it like standard operating procedure for popular fighters.

Fans have become conditioned by superstar fighters retiring for a brief period, then returning when they’re offered a massive sum to unretire. They’ve seen it used by the stars, and they’ve become naturally skeptical.

Tyson Fury retired for a year, and he’s being lured out of retirement for a fight that he’s expected to be paid a career-high.

In Crawford’s case, the timing is seen as suspicious by some fans on social media. They view it as strategic on the 38-year-old Bud’s part. In other words, some people feel he’s using this as leverage, retiring to get an enormous purse offered to him to come out of retirement.

They believe this is a negotiation tactic from Crawford to get a bigger purse from Turki Alalshikh for his rematch with Canelo Alvarez in 2026. Crawford’s coach, Bernie ‘Tha Boxer’ Davis, mentioned in an interview with MillCity Boxing, “One hundred million—neither seventy-five nor ninety—one hundred. If it’s not that, then what’s the point?”

Understandably, some fans doubt that Crawford is seriously retiring, but rather using this as a ploy to get the $100M purse for a second fight with Alvarez. He was paid a reported $50 million for the first fight last September.

It’s unclear whether Turki was planning to offer Terence the big purse that his coach Bernie mentioned as his asking price to return for another fight. That’s a lot of money for a fight that didn’t bring in the same numbers on Netflix as Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson. That event had 108 million views. In contrast, Canelo vs. Crawford did 414 million views on Netflix.

Crawford’s performance wasn’t overly entertaining against Canelo in what Turki named, ‘The Fight of the Century.’ Bud moved around the ring most of the fight, and briefly came alive for brief flurries in rounds nine and twelve. It wasn’t a must-watch type of effort.