LOS ANGELES – Terence Crawford belongs among a special class now that he ranks as a four-division champion with Saturday night’s tightly contested unanimous-decision victory over World Boxing Association junior-middleweight champion Israil Madrimov.
But as the facial swelling, the late-fight corner panic and the inability to back up Uzbekistan’s Madrimov fully revealed, new 154-pound champion Crawford, 36, can now let go of this pursuit of recently undisputed 168-pound champion Canelo Alvarez.
Of course it would make a nice fight poster to match the four-division champions and decade-long pound-for-pound residents in a super-fight.
Yes, it would take Crawford’s bank account to a record figure.
And, before Saturday’s bout, it seemed to be among the top-ranked choices for Saudi Arabia’s boxing power broker Turki Alalshikh’s list of fantasy fights.
Let’s reel it in. Let’s come back to reality.
It was actually Alalshikh who originally provided the better alternative, saying in a pre-fight interview that while he has made an offer for Alvarez to fight Crawford – “If he is smart, then he will accept it,” Alalshikh said – there’s also the option he’d fund in matching Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs) against top junior-middleweight contender Vergil Ortiz Jr. (21-0, 21 KOs).
Texas’ Ortiz, 26, was quick to post on “X,” “@turkialalshikh, put me in.”
Ortiz fights for the World Boxing Council 154-pound interim title Saturday at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas against Ukraine’s Serhii Bohachuk (24-1, 23 KOs).
“(He) needs to win,” Crawford trainer Brian McIntyre said of Ortiz.
Ortiz trainer Robert Garcia said while Ortiz needs to focus on the Bohachuk bout first, he thought “Crawford’s fight was a very close fight.
“Maybe (Crawford’s) performance was not good enough for people to expect him to do very well against Canelo, so maybe (an Ortiz fight) is a good idea,” Garcia said.
Crawford has now also forced the hand of new WBC/World Boxing Organization junior-middleweight champion Sebastian Fundora, who has been told by the WBO that he needs to negotiate a fight expeditiously with Crawford or he’ll be forced to surrender that belt to Crawford.
Those options are far superior to the notion of moving up another 14 pounds and hoping someone like Alalshikh will break the bank over a fight that now more than ever reeks of being a foregone conclusion.
If Madrimov didn’t display one instant of being hurt Saturday in a 116-112, 115-113, 115-113 outcome on the scorecards that was decided by Crawford sweeping the last two rounds on all three cards, how do you expect Alvarez’s granite chin to be cracked?
If your trainer’s first news conference expression was a sigh of relief against an outgoing champion in his 12th pro fight, how can you expect to put on a worthwhile show against a world champion since 2011 who’s heading to his 66th pro fight Sept. 14 in Las Vegas?
“If the money is right, you gotta fight,” Crawford told DAZN in the ring afterward.
But is that money still there now?
Crawford tried to campaign that Madrimov was not his toughest fight, including stoppages over Yuriorkis Gamboa, Jose Benavidez Jr., and Egidijus Kavaliauskas as tougher tests.
McIntyre was more frank, admitting “we’ll see” about remaining at 154, that “we’ll go back to the gym and try and figure it out.
The trainer said Crawford could’ve improved his head movement after getting struck by several hard Madrimov right hands.
“Toward the end, I told (Crawford), ‘You’ve got to step to him,’” McIntyre said.
He said fighting Alvarez would require getting “those legs in shape, because that side-to-side movement” would be paramount.
McIntyre said because Crawford is “almost done” it would be a fight for “legacy.”
As one boxing expert said after the fight, it’s no wonder Crawford wants Canelo most because it might take nine Ortiz bouts for Crawford to earn what he could make in one Canelo fight. But sales require a match to offer some doubt over the outcome.
And that intrigue is now severely lacking.
“To me, 168’s a huge jump,” Madrimov and sometime-Alvarez promoter Eddie Hearn said. “Terence really struggled to come to terms with the movement and the skill and the right hand of Israil Madrimov.”
As sharply as Madrimov grew his stock Saturday night, no one was ready to label him an equal to Alvarez.
Thus, Hearn said Alalshikh “likes” the idea of Crawford-Ortiz.
By Lance Pugmire