Terence Crawford did what everybody expected to do to big mouth Hank Lundy last weekend when he doled out a one-sided beating over the course of five rounds in the second defense of his WBO Junior Welterweight title. The bout featured what we have come to expect from Crawford as he took Lundy apart with surgical-like precision, hitting him almost at will and battering him to a halt. With how good Crawford has looked over the part of the last two years, there are very few people that may give him a challenge, but unless he actually starts facing those fighters there is a risk the public will turn against him.
After Lundy, Bob Arum was quick to name drop Ruslan Provodnikov as a summer opponent for Crawford with hopes to take Crawford to the West Coast. That is an awful fight that is really no more competitive than any of Crawford?s past few fights.
Nothing against Provodnikov, who I assume probably eats pain for all I know, but outside of the blood and guts excitement he may bring thanks to his reckless style, how many people out there thinks he stands a chance against Crawford? Provodnikov gave Timothy Bradley, Chris Algieri and Lucas Matthysse all they could handle when he fought them, but came up short each time. As a matter of fact, the biggest win of Provodnikov?s career came when he beat a disheveled and washed-up Mike Alvarado a little over two years ago.
If the objective of Top Rank is to build a star out of Crawford, they can?t expect to do it against guys like Lundy and Provodnikov who have constantly fell short when the lights have shined the brightest. One thing is that Crawford isn?t in a position similar to Gennady Golovkin where he has no choice but to fight gimme after gimme or on the wrong side of promotional red tape. There are fights that can be made very easily to increase his stature without resorting to beating up the trial horses.
It is no secret that Arum was trying as hard as he could to cajole Manny Pacquiao to fight Crawford in his farewell to boxing fight, but Pacquiao opted for the easier route in fighting a guy he beat twice (to hell with what the record says) in Timothy Bradley. Crawford/Pacquiao would have been the quick and easy route to anoint him as the star-apparent of this new era, but otherwise, there are no other fights to get him to the extremely thin pay per view peak of the sport.
Bradley, should he win, is the most logical choice for Crawford in the Fall, but the immediate now is the one man who is clearly the most dangerous opponent for him to fight: Viktor Postol. Postol provides the exact kind of challenge that Crawford and his team need to take to get him to the next step and keep the momentum going. He is just as skilled as Crawford and has some things such as height and activity that we have not seen in any of his previous opponents.
If he gets past Postol in the same fashion he has done the lesser opponents, then it would be downright stupid to deny him a mega fight against the likes of Bradley, Pacquiao or anyone who is looking for a partner for the big dance.
If mediocre, overmatched opponents are all they?re going to find until they figure that out, then the bandwagon might start running a bit thin in the months to come.
