Terence Crawford has backtracked on his recent comment about being willing to go up to 168 to challenge Canelo Alvarez for his titles, and now it seems he wants him to melt down to 160.
The Nebraska native Crawford is wasting time, trying to negotiate a fight with Canelo in public to try and shame him into giving him a catchweight handicap.
Crawford found an old interview from 2020 with Canelo, saying that he’d be okay with the idea of coming down to 160 to face Errol Spence Jr.
This, of course, when Spence was still unbeaten and the drained, car-crashed physical wreck that witnessed getting the stuffing beaten out of him last summer against Crawford on July 29th.
Crawford should move up to 168, put together a few solid wins over David Benavidez, Dmitry Bivol, and David Morrell Jr, and use that as his bargaining chip to get a fight with Canelo instead of trying to weasel him down to 160.
Back when Canelo was entertaining the idea of a fight with Spence in 2020, Errol was still all there physically and not the ravaged, depleted shell that we saw lose to Crawford.
Canelo had only fought once at 168 in 2020 when he asked about a fight with Spence. A lot has changed since then, with Canelo having been fighting for the last three years at 168 and not as young.
It’s unclear what made Crawford (40-0, 31 KOs) change his mind, but it could be that he tried sparring a 168-pounder and discovered how difficult that would be for him. Hence, he’s now hinting that he wants the fight with Canelo (60-2-2, 39 KOs) to occur at 160, which is probably never going to happen.
If Crawford doesn’t move up to 168, then whatever chance he had of fighting Canelo will disappear. Realistically, Canelo won’t fight the 36-year-old Crawford unless he moves up to super middleweight and beats the top guys that are in front of him, meaning Benavidez, Morrell, Demetrius Andrade and Bivol.
Crawford needs to understand this sooner rather than later. He’s not young enough to be slow on the uptake because if waits two or three years, naively hoping Canelo will change his mind and come down to 160, he’ll have nothing to show for the time.
Since Crawford has said nothing about wanting to go up to 168 and earn the fight with Canelo by fighting Benavidez, Morrell, or Bivol, he needs to drop it already and move up to 154 and target the winner of this Saturday’s fight between WBO junior middleweight champion Tim Tszyu and Brian Mendoza.
