Turki Al-Sheikh wants to make Terence Crawford vs. Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis this year now that Canelo Alvarez has opted to face Jake Paul.
The former four-division world champion Crawford may not get motivated by a fight against Ennis because it’s one where he has everything to lose and not much to gain as far as his legacy. Ennis has won only one world title and is not a PPV attraction.
Payday Question
There’s a good chance Crawford will refuse the Ennis fight because it won’t bring him the payday and pump his legacy the way a win over Canelo would. Instead, Crawford will likely wait for the Canelo vs. Paul fight to play out and then hope Turki can negotiate a deal for September.
Crawford won’t want the hard work that is involved in fighting the much younger 27-year-old Ennis and will likely get beaten. Terence’s last fight against Israil Madrimov on August 3rd showed that he’s not the fighter he once was now that he’s at 154. Couple that with age and inactivity, and you get disaster for Crawford if he fights Ennis.
Crawford-Ennis is a fight that Al-Sheikh can make as long as Terence is willing to put his unbeaten 41-0 record at risk against the young lion, who will be looking to use him as a springboard to stardom. Boots defeating Crawford would be far better than becoming undisputed at 154.
Mike Coppinger reports that Turki suspended his attempts to finalize a deal for Canelo vs. Crawford in September. This comes after the news of Canelo fighting Jake Paul in what will surely be a much bigger fight than the Canelo-Crawford event would have been.
Ennis (33-0, 29 KOs) is ambitious and fearless. He’ll likely readily agree to take the fight with Crawford. It would come down to the Nebraska native Crawford, 37, to lower his expectations from the giant payday that he was obviously hoping to get fighting Canelo to a smaller one against Boots Ennis.
That fight is still very risky for Crawford, maybe even more so because Ennis is young. All the tricks that Crawford could have used against Canelo won’t work against Boots.
