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Philippines, 22 Nov 2024 |
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A Lot of Unfinished Business at 154 for Crawford By Teodoro Medina Reynoso PhilBoxing.com Mon, 21 Oct 2024  It's so unlike of Terrence Crawford to be angling for a sweepstakes fight versus super middleweight king Canelo Alvarez two full divisions up from where he is at currently, the super welterweight where a lot of business has to be attended to first. Unless Bud is really going for a lucrative retirement fund. Or a sure money grab, as some boxing pundits put it. But there's a lot of unfinished business at 154 lbs for him to attend to first for him to stake himself as a worthy bet in the Canelo Alvarez sweepstakes. There's Errol Spence who has been calling for a rematch at super welterweight after shockingly losing their welterweight unification last year via TKO. There's also Israil Madrimov who is egging for an immediate title rematch as he remains unconvinced that Crawford has taken his WBA title in their recent bout ("He boxed well but did not take my title"). Then there's Sebastian Fundora who put himself as the man to beat at 154 with a bloody TKO WBO title win over the then highly touted Tim Tszyu. Incidentally Crawford is the WBO interim titleholder, making a meeting with the "Towering Inferno" a distinct possibility. Yesterday Russian Bakhram Murtazaliev added to the list with a very dominant third round stoppage of the same Tszyu in defense of his IBF belt. The chilling power of the tall Russian and the relative ease he disposed of Tszyu have many boxing ghouls salivating for a Crawford-Murtazaliev showdown. Lest we forget, the last man to unify all belts at 154 lbs is Jermell Charlo who remains champion in recess as recognized by WBA where Crawford is the current regular champion. No one has the right to claim kingship of the super welterweight without fighting Charlo. Crawford, since moving up to super lightweight after leaving his mark at 135 lbs, has earned a reputation as one who will not stop until he had established his full dominance of the weight class. At 140, this he did by defeating his erstwhile co beltholders as Victor Postol for the unified WBO and WBC titles via UD after initially bagging the WBO belt by TKO over Thomas Dulorme and finally adding the unified WBA and IBF crowns via 3rd round KO over Julius Indongo. Crawford engaged in successful title defenses in between unification bouts making his domination of the super lightweight class complete. Moving up to the welterweights, he won the WBO belt by stopping the vaunted Manny Pacquiao conqueror Jeff Horn. He made a number of successful defenses while waiting for his chance for unification with WBC-WBA-IBF champion Errol Spence. He likewise resisted all urgings for him to forget about Spence and move up to 154 and even patiently waited for Errol to heal from an earlier car crash. When the much awaited unification at welterweight eventually came, Crawford fully utilised the opportunity to establish himself not only as king of the welterweights but disputedly the best pound for pound fighter in the world. So it is so un-Crawford for him to leave the 154 lbs division with so much unfinished business. The author Teodoro Medina Reynoso is a veteran boxing radio talk show host living in the Philippines. He can be reached at teddyreynoso@yahoo.com and by phone 09215309477. Click here to view a list of other articles written by Teodoro Medina Reynoso.  |
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