There have probably been more great welterweights in the last 40 or so years in boxing than in any other weight class. Since 1980, welterweights Sugar Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns, Roberto Duran, Pipino Cuevas, Buddy McGirt, Donald Curry, Pernell Whitaker, Carlos Palomino, Oscar De La Hoya, Felix Trinidad, Shane Mosley, Miguel Cotto, Timothy Bradley and Floyd Mayweather Jr. have all been inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
And the Filipino legend, Manny Pacquiao, will join them in the Hall in 2025 assuming he doesn’t take a fight between now and then.
The division has produced some unbelievable talent.
Terence Crawford, who on Saturday moves up from welterweight to chase a super welterweight belt when he meets Israil Madrimov at BMO Stadium in Los Angeles in the main event of the first Riyadh Season card in the U.S., is without question in the upper echelon of that list.
Crawford is 40-0 with 31 KOs and has won titles in three weight classes already, and was undisputed at both 140 and 147. He’ll make a bid to become just the 24th boxing in the sport’s history to win championships in four weight classes when he faces Madrimov.
It’s a coin flip at the top now, with Crawford, heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk and super bantamweight champ Naoya Inoue each have a legitimate argue to be No. 1 in the world.
At this stage, though, after his one-sided beatdown of Spence, Crawford is on cruise control to the Hall of Fame. The question now isn’t so much comparing himself to today’s best, because he’s he’s clearly run laps past today’s crowd.
“I think he’s an all-time great,” trainer Stephen “Breadman” Edwards said of Crawford.
Edwards is so high on Crawford that he thinks that only three of the welterweights on the above list would be clearly favored to defeat Crawford: Sugar Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns and Roberto Duran.
“If you’re being fair and you take all of those guys and you aren’t grading them on accomplishments and having other Hall of Fame fighters on the resume and you just said who would win if these guys fought, who would you bet your mortgage on if these guys were fighting on their best day, I would only make Leonard, Hearns and the Duran of 1980 who beat Leonard comprehensive favorites over Crawford,” Edwards said. “They’re the only guys who I think would legitimately be favored over him where I would be able to comfortably say that I would favor them to beat him and feel good about.
“I think Crawford, him and Trinidad’s an even fight. I’d favor him over Mosley and De La Hoya. I’d favor him over Pipino Cuevas. I’d slightly favor him over Wilfred Benitez. Him and Donald Curry would be a very, very tough fight to figure out, but I don’t walk away favoring Curry. On their best nights, I have no idea who wins between him and Mayweather and him and Pacquiao.”
Hall of Fame broadcaster Jim Lampley, who is in Los Angeles working for PPV.com, is also high on Crawford. Lampley, though, said it’s impossible to know how Crawford would have fared against those legends.
One can only fight the opponents in his era, and while Crawford has a number of solid opponents on his welterweight resume, only Spence is really close to the Hall of Fame.
“You don’t get credit for being as great as other great fighters unless you fight great fighters,” Lampley said. “If Ray Leonard is your starting point, and logically so, the wonderful thing for Ray Leonard is that his career coincided in such a way with those of Duran, Hearns and [Marvelous Marvin] Hagler and Donny Lalonde and a variety of other interesting tests for him. He got to prove a lot against top-notch opposition.”
