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What's the Big Ado About Canelo-Crawford? By Teodoro Medina Reynoso PhilBoxing.com Fri, 21 Feb 2025  The fight between Saul Canelo Alvarez and Terrence Crawford is still several months away and yet every Tom, Dick and Harry of boxing have been putting their dollars worth of analysis as if it is the biggest deal ever in the professional fight sport. The big ado about the fight is the huge difference in weight and possibly strength and punching power between the two, Alvarez being a super middleweight who has also fought twice at light heavyweight; and Crawford who has just moved up to super welterweight or light middleweight after sweeping the opposition from lightweight through the welterweights. Terrence is moving two weight divisions up for this clash. Fair enough, until we consider other important factors as skills levels, speed and resilience, among others, in which Crawford could even hold the advantage over the red-head Mexican. And until we remember that the likes of junior featherweight Guillermo Rigondeaux and welterweights Kelly Brook and Amir Khan were also in almost similar situation against lightweight Vasily Lomachenko, middleweights Gennady Golovkin and the same Canelo Alvarez in the fairly recent past. All three were stopped within the distance but not after having their moments. The last smaller fighter in the recent past to have been successful against a bigger opponent was lightweight Sugar Shane Mosley doing a modern Roberto Duran in wresting the WBC world welterweight belt from Oscar De La Hoya who himself started his pro career in and around 135 lbs. Then there's Roy Jones Jr essentially a blown up middleweight winning the heavyweight crown against John Ruiz rewriting boxing history. Jones though had pit stop at light heavyweight and where he bucked the odds against the likes of rugged Eric Harding and Julio Cesar Gonzalez. There's also Jones' contemporary James Toney who went on to win the world cruiserweight title beating a hard punching Vassily Jirov and competed well against some of the top heavyweights of his time including Evander Holyfield whom he upset by TKO. But looking back in the more distant past, we have had more examples of tough fine smaller fighters who dared challenge the limits of their capabilities by battling bigger fighters and champions of established reputations. The most famous and successful of this rare breed of pugilists is American Henry Armstrong otherwise known as Homicidal Hank who is known as the first and only fighter to win and hold world boxing championships simultaneously in three weight-classes-featherweight, lightweight and welterweight. He nearly won a fourth at middleweight but was held to a draw by Filipino defending champion Ceferino Garcia in the 1930s. What is not generally known was that Armstrong won the welterweight title straight from the featherweights, beating Barney Ross, a future all time great boxer like him. To make a modern day comparison and give us a clear idea of how amazing that feat was, that's like Manny Pacquiao winning the welterweight crown from Miguel Cotto after winning the featherweight title from Marco Antonio Barrera. Much earlier, there had been the likes of Stanley Ketchel, a rugged middleweight who sowed terror among many light heavyweights of his era and even challenged then heavyweight champion Jack Johnson and Mickey Walker, the original Toy Bulldog who reigned at welterweight and bullied middleweights, light heavyweights, even heavyweights in his time. And then there's the so called Murderers Row who were essentially feared middleweight fighters who fought and beat many light heavyweights and even heavyweights but were denied cracks at world championships merely because they were blacks or deemed not white enough in the Jim Crow era. Harry Greb and Sam Langford were two of the more noted fighters of this distinguished group. So the next time the publicists try to sell their pitch regarding the Canelo vs Crawford fight as if such has not been done before, go back to boxing history which is just a tap away especially in this modern electronic information age. 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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