Crawford tells Horn: I’m going to mess you up on fight night

Boxingnews24.com

By Chris Williams

Terence Crawford doesn’t like that WBO welterweight champion Jeff Horn is trash talking him for pulling out of their April 14th fight due to an injury. Horn said this week that Crawford should have stuck with the April 14th fight date and fought him with one good hand if he’s as talented as his team says he is.

Unfortunately, the Crawford-Horn fight has been postponed until likely May. It depends on how quickly Crawford’s hand heals.

@jeffhornboxer ima show you a little princess come fight night you just keep training and keeping my belt warm because I’m f—–g you up come fight night you me and everyone know it,” Crawford said on his social media site.

Horn took the high road by not getting in the gutter with Crawford with his response:

Here’s what Horn said on his social media site in response:

”We will see eventually.”

We’re going to find out if Crawford’s punching power carries up to the 147 lb. weight class. He could wind up like Mikey Garcia, who is a huge puncher at 135, but not at 140. That five pounds of weight made all the difference in the world. Garcia hasn’t knocked out anyone since moving to 140. For Crawford, he’s moving up seven pounds to fight at 147. His power and his hand speed might not be the same at 147. If that’s the case, Crawford will need to use his feet a lot more to avoid having to take the heavier blows from fighters in the welterweight division. I didn’t like the way Crawford’s head was ricocheting from the shots from the short 5’5” Felix Diaz in their fight last year. If Crawford is not the same fighter at 147, he’s going to have to move back down to 140, because he’ll start taking loses if Top Rank does business with the management for the good welterweights in the division like Spence, Thurman, Danny Garcia and Porter.

Horn has the size, power and the boxing skills to turn his fight with Crawford into a rough brawl that might give him a chance of winning. If you look at Crawford’s fight against Viktor Postol in 2015, he was at his worst in the fight when the Ukrainian fighter went after him in the 12th round and was looking for a knockout. Crawford got nailed with some big shots in a couple of exchanges, and he did not like it. At that point, Crawford got his bike and circled the ring for the final minute of the fight while sticking his tongue out at Postol. Not surprisingly, the boxing fans booed Crawford. They didn’t like his running and they let him know that. My point is that Crawford couldn’t handle it when Postol unloaded on him with combinations. Crawford’s head was whip-lashing every which way from the shots Postol was hitting him with. Horn has a good chance of beating Crawford if he can get him into the same type of war to beat him down.

The one thing that could hurt Horn’s chances of winning the fight is the fact that it’s taking place in the U.S rather than his home country of Australia. Horn might not get away with his roughhouse tactics against Crawford like he did with Pacquiao. If the referee takes points off from Horn for his roughhouse tactics, then he’ll likely have to change his fighting style. Top Rank had their only money fighter Manny Pacquiao fight Horn in Australia last year in July. For some reason, Top Rank isn’t doing the same thing with Crawford. Top Rank is trying to turn Crawford into a star. If he were to be roughed up and beaten by a controversial decision the way Pacquiao was last year, it would hurt his chances of becoming a star.

Crawford will need to change his fighting style for him to be able to knockout Horn or any of the top fighters in the 147 lb. weight class, because his hit and run style of fighting isn’t going to work at welterweight. The fighters that Crawford did stop at lightweight and light welterweight weren’t known as being quality guys. Crawford didn’t knockout Viktor Postol, Ricky Burns, Andriy Klimov, Brieidis Prescott or Raymundo Beltran.

It’s going to be hard for Top Rank to turn Crawford into a pay-per-view star with his personality. His language, his non-smiling personality, and the stuff he says on social media. Crawford isn’t personable. When you compare Crawford people skills to that of Floyd Mayweather, it’s like two guys from the opposite sides of the spectrum. Mayweather is a lot friendlier, and he doesn’t go into threats or use a lot of expletives when speaking. If Top Rank wants to turn Crawford into a star, they’re going to need to remake his image from top to bottom. I don’t think it’s possible for Crawford to become a PPV buy. I think he’ll be a pound-for-pound fighter, but that’s it. He’ll be liked by hardcore boxing fans, but I don’t think he’s going to get to the level of PPV star. The combination of Crawford’s personality and the poor match-making by Top Rank will keep him from ever becoming a PPV star. The problem is that you can only go so far if your being matched against guys the casual and hardcore boxing fans have zero interest in seeing. For Crawford to become a star in boxing, he’ll need to beat these fighters: Danny Garcia, Keith Thurman, Errol Spence Jr., Amir Khan, Kell Brook, Jarrett Hurd and Jermell Charlo.

I don’t think Crawford can beat Thurman, Spence, Porter, Hurd or Charlo. I included some junior middleweights to the list, because if there’s no one that Top Rank can put Crawford in that will interest the boxing fans in the WBO’s top 15, then he’ll have to look to 154 to fight the best guys. Crawford will be in the same position Paul Williams was in years ago. He was a great fighter that couldn’t get fights at 147, so he had to move up to 154. Top Rank boss Bob Arum can feed Crawford all his fighters in his stable, but he’s not going to become a PPV star facing Jeff Horn two or three times, and the likes of Konstantin Ponomarev.

These are the guys that Crawford has knocked out in the last six years:

• John Molina Jr.

• Dierry Jean

• Felix Diaz

• Henry Lundy

• Thomas Dulorme

• Julius Indongo

• Hardy Paredes

• Sidney Siqyeura

• Alejandro Sanabria

• Yuriorkis Gamboa

• David Rodela

• Andre Gorges

 

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