Crawford reflects on win over Canelo: ‘It was special’ (1:15)Terence Crawford joins “The Pat McAfee Show” to discuss how it felt to defeat Canelo Alvarez in a blockbuster match. (1:15)
An all-time great fighter, though one who has just come into his financial prime, announces his retirement, leaving, say, another $100 million on the table.
The only other guy I’ve known to do that — and stay retired — is the great Andre Ward, who left in 2017 after consecutive wins over the erstwhile light heavyweight boogeyman, Sergey Kovalev.
And it all goes back to this double-sided notion of money and doubt. For a generation of fighters, some of them truly excellent, though not great, fighting Canelo had come to represent the score of a lifetime. For Crawford, however, Canelo became his “white whale,” an existential corrective for every doubter at every juncture of his career. And there were a lot.
“That’s the only fight I want,” Crawford told Turki Alalshikh, the chairman of the Saudi Arabian general entertainment authority, who bankrolled the Canelo fight.
At the time, Alalshikh was keener on matching Crawford with Jaron “Boots” Ennis or Vergil Ortiz Jr., both undefeated superstars at 154 pounds. Crawford wouldn’t hear of it, though.
“Boots is not a megafight,” he told me in September. “Vergil Ortiz is not a megafight. This is the tail end of my career. They’re going to say, ‘You were supposed to win.’ I want Canelo Alvarez.”
Crawford had doubters at every division, going back to the amateurs. Though in retrospect, you have to wonder why, given his amateur victory over a young fighter as gifted as Mikey Garcia. Crawford was doubted for being from Omaha, Nebraska, which was nowhere on the boxing map until he put it there.
Crawford was doubted by the local cops. By the kids on the corner. By some of his teachers. But mostly, and most famously, by his own mother, Miss Debra.
“I knew it’s gonna stick in his head,” she told me in 2018. “And he’s gonna go over there and whup some ass.”
In fact, that’s what happened: a little-known fighter traveling continents to win a unanimous decision in the champion’s backyard. That’s how it started, his long, undefeated title run.
Boxing is full of traps, starting with the fighter’s ego. The same ego that first made you great keeps you coming back as a diminished version of yourself. Beyond that, the game itself is all but rigged, favoring the bigger man against the smaller one, younger versus older, the so-called A-side fighter who generates the lion’s share of the revenue over everyone else. At 38 years old, Crawford, a guy who had spent most of his career south of 147 pounds, was none of those things when matched against Canelo Alvarez in September. Canelo wasn’t merely the undisputed 168-pound champion then, but also boxing’s most lucrative attraction. Yet Crawford’s historic victory was even more one-sided than the unanimous scorecards would have you believe.
If you didn’t think he could beat Canelo then, maybe now you’ll think better. Crawford will stay retired — if only because the boxing odds are always on a comeback. Doubt him if you must, just remember when it comes to doubters, Crawford is undefeated. Before Canelo, there were those who thought he would never beat Errol Spence Jr., whose career he ended. There were those at his former promotional company, Top Rank, who, in fairness, signed him when no other big promoter would, came to think he would never be much of an attraction.
Crawford reflects on win over Canelo: ‘It was special’ (1:15)Terence Crawford joins “The Pat McAfee Show” to discuss how it felt to defeat Canelo Alvarez in a blockbuster match. (1:15)
Terence Crawford joins “The Pat McAfee Show” to discuss how it felt to defeat Canelo Alvarez in a blockbuster match. (1:15)
By that standard, the Crawford matriarch is right up there with Olympus herself.
It was a pleasure. It was challenging. It was an honor.