By Chris Williams: #10 WBO Hank Lundy (26-5-1, 13 KOs) will be meeting up with WBO light welterweight champion Terence Crawford (27-0, 19 KOs) this Saturday night on February 27 on HBO with the start time at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT.
For boxing fans wondering where is the fight? It’s The location of the fight is at Madison Square Garden in New York.
This is a fight that Crawford, 28, agreed to because he wants to shut the mouth of Lundy, who had previously trash talked him on Twitter. If Crawford is going to agree to fight every fringe contender that trash talks him during his career, then he’s never going to get to the next level and become a pay-per-view star. Crawford needs to show boxing fans that he’s a world class fighter. He wants to become a PPV attraction, but he’s not performing like a PPV star.
Crawford has taken his career backwards in the past year with fights against Dierry Jean and Thomas Dulorme in 2015. Those were not big enough fights to do much for Crawford to increase his popularity. Now he’s wasting another fight in his career by facing the 32-year-old Lundy instead of insisting that his promoter Bob Arum find him a better name.
In 2014, Crawford beat Ricky Burns, Raymundo Beltran and Yuriorkis Gamboa. At the time, it was thought that this was just the beginning for Crawford, and that he would continue to get bigger and bigger fights each time out. Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked that way for Crawford. He was in the running for a fight against Manny Pacquiao for April 9, but he lost out to Tim Bradley due to him being a better pay-per-view fighter.
That made sense for Arum to select Bradley, because he was after all a better money fighter than Crawford. However, it didn’t make sense for Arum to then stick Crawford with Lundy. That was just really bad match-making. I’m not sure if Arum gave Crawford a take it or leave it offer by telling him all he had was Lundy. If that was the case, then I guess Crawford had little choice but to take the fight if he wanted a payday. But it’s still just a really terrible fight.
“He’s not as good as Viktor Postol,” Lundy said to ESPN.com. “I went to [Ukraine] to fight Mr. Postol. These guys wouldn’t fight me in the USA because they know what will happen. I’m the fighter that none of these guys wants to fight. On Saturday night there is going to be something special going on in that ring at The Garden. No, he’s not the best guy I have fought.”
Postol is now considered the guy in the 140lb division after his one-sided stoppage win over Lucas Matthysse. You can understand why Lundy would be so impressed with Postol. He lost to him three years ago by a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores of 113-116, 112-116, and 112-116. It was a fairly close fight, and a lot more competitive than the Postol-Matthysse fight turned out to be.
Like I said before, I’m surprised HBO even agreed to televise the Crawford-Lundy fight. It’s a bad fight. When I hear that HBO is cool to televising Vasyl Lomachenko vs. Nicholas Walters, it makes you wonder how they could have ever agreed to televise Crawford vs. Lundy.
It seems like that mismatch slipped through the cracks and got by the HBO quality inspection department. How do you agree to a mismatch like Crawford vs. Lundy and then show no interest in a Lomachenko-Walters fight? It seems backwards to me.
“He has said a couple of things all the time that upset me but nothing that has made me change my game plan or wanting to go in there and do more or fight different than I would normally fight,” said Crawford said to espn.com. “I am going to go in there and fight my fight and do what I have to do to get the job done.”
Crawford is not going to impress boxing fans and make them take notice of him if he’s just going to be looking to “fight my fight and do what I have to do to get the job done.” Crawford is going to need to do a lot more than box if he wants to turn into a star. He’s going to need to stick his neck out and take risks in order to impress the boxing fans enough to want to pay to see his fights. Right now, I don’t want to pay to see Crawford fight. I’m barely interested in seeing his fight against Lundy. If I didn’t have to write about the fight, I wouldn’t bother watching it because there’s a better fight on this Saturday night between Leo Santa Cruz and Kiko Martinez that I would rather see. Crawford needs to change his mindset and become more of a seek and destroy puncher if he wants to make fans want to see him fight.
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