By: Sean Crose
Naysayers will walk away from Saturday’s junior middleweight title match in Los Angeles with the conviction that Terence Crawford can never defeat Canelo Alvarez. Or that four division champion Crawford is over the hill. Perhaps these people are right on both counts. Perhaps not. Where they’re certainly wrong, however, is in their perspective. Crawford rose from welterweight to junior middleweight and battled a magnificently skilled Israil Madrimov in an intense back and fourth contest of high quality boxing this past weekend. What Crawford did in defeating Madrimov on Saturday was exceedingly impressive. That, not the conjecture, needs to the be story.
“He wasn’t throwing wild shots like I was wanting him to do,” Crawford admitted of Madrimov after the fight was over. “I figured it out from the get-go, but I was being patient. I didn’t wanna rush in with anything; that’s how I got caught a couple of times, trying to eat too soon.” Such things happen when one faces an opponent of Madrimov’s caliber. “Israil was a tough competitor,” Crawford continued. “I knew he was gonna be tough, I knew all about him when I went to Uzbekistan. He’s really strong, he’s durable, he took a lot of good shots. He got me to round 12. He had fast feet, good rhythm upstairs, and he was strong. And he was waiting to counter me, just like I was trying to counter him.”
There is likely a school of thought among some boxing fans that a marquee fighter can’t put on a truly great performance unless he does so against another marquee fighter. Such thinking is ridiculous, of course, but the bottom line is that a large portion of the boxing public might still view Errol Spence as having been as serious a threat to Crawford than Madrimov was. Perhaps this is simply human nature, but it doesn’t particularly make much sense.
Still, when a fighter is as good as Crawford is, it’s naturally disappointing when that fighter doesn’t completely dominate and destroy his latest opponent. Such things happened to Mike Tyson, and they’re now happening to Crawford. Greatness clearly comes with a price, that price being high – sky high – expectations. Boxing fans are a demanding bunch. Then again, people want to be entertained when they pay the better half of a hundred dollars for a pay per view card. Fortunately for Crawford, he’s generally one of the most entertaining combatants in the sport.