Barring an unsatisfying conclusion such as a no contest or a draw, we will have a completely unified division in boxing come Saturday night. Terence Crawford and Julius Indongo have each collected two of the four belts in the junior welterweight division. Now they fight for them all. For once in boxing, it really is that simple. Oleksandr Gvozdyk will be featured on the undercard.
Though the WBO belt is a relatively recent addition to world championship status in boxing, it still remains remarkable that this will only be the third time in history in which a fighter holds all four titles. Previously Bernard Hopkins picked up his fourth belt in 2001 against Oscar De La Hoya. He lost them in 2005 to Jermain Taylor and that is the entire history of this happening. Prior to the need for the WBO belt, Kostya Tszyu is the only man to have ever unified junior welterweight when he stopped Zab Judah in 2003, collecting the IBF belt he needed to go along with his WBA and WBC trinkets.
Nebraska’s Terence Crawford (31-0, 22 KOs), who will have home turf advantage in Lincoln, is expected to be the one to accomplish this impressive feat. Crawford announced his presence in 2013 with three HBO wins, but he didn’t win win his first belt until 2014 at lightweight with a dominant win in Scotland over Ricky Burns. He defended it twice against Yuriorkis Gamboa, the fight that cemented his reputation, and Ray Beltran in dominant wins before moving up to junior welterweight.
The Omaha native is 6-0 at the weight, all in title fights. He holds the WBO and WBC belts, winning the WBO strap on his debut against Thomas Dulorme and the WBC against Viktor Postol last July. It was the Postol fight that for now goes down as his biggest win too as the Ukrainian was widely considered the clear number two in the division. Crawford’s win cemented his status as number one in the division by a margin which is uncommon in the sport.
Terence Crawford is a really complete fighter. If he has a flaw it is that he doesn’t care about winning the first couple rounds. Instead, he studies his opponent and takes a bit to get warmed up. If any of his opponents can steal a few late rounds, we could have an interesting decision on our hands one of these days. They haven’t been able to accomplish this yet, however, as once he gets going, Crawford does what he wants. He has great athleticism, reflexes, technique, and really good power too. He can fight off the front of the back foot, be the aggressor or the counter puncher, working both upstairs and down indiscriminately in either case. He is at absolutely worst one of the top five fighters in the sport.
In truth, as much as we know how good Terence Crawford is, we know just as little about Julius Indongo (22-0, 11 KOs). In the entirety of his career, we have seen one fight and forty seconds of Indongo. Think about that. In the era of Youtube, torrenting, and all the other tools of the internet, we have a fighter with two belts going into a complete unification fight that we have one fight’s worth of video on. This is insane. It would be barely believable if we didn’t already know it to be true. Yet, it is.
The Namibian did participate in the 2008 Olympics, by that measure having a successful amateur career, but he lost his first bout there. After that, all was quiet on the Indongo front as his career flew completely under the radar in Namibia. His boxing career, that is, because until recently Indongo was also a cop. One important thing that he did do was pick up and begin defending a minor WBO belt. Though it was the IBF that eventually gave him his shot, these minor belts get fighters some attention from the sanctioning bodies.
When Indongo did get his shot last December, it took place on the road in Russia against power punching Eduard Troyanovsky. Indongo was unknown and looked all the world like a pointless, easy defense for the Russian destroyer. Forty seconds later and one left hand later, Julius Indongo improbably had the IBF belt. Sensing potentially easy unification, Scotland’s Ricky Burns decided to bring his WBA belt to the table next. Indongo didn’t wipe him away like Troyanovsky, but he did dominate the fight using his range and athleticism. It was the first time we were able to see Indongo work over time and he looked pretty good working from the outside. In fact, the Namibian unified titlist looked every bit as good against Burns as Terence Crawford did, though it should be noted that Crawford met a much younger, probably better Ricky Burns.
For my money, this is probably an Icarus situation here. Indongo has learned how to fly from nothing. He has had an amazing run doing so, but here he will probably get much too close to the sun that is the skill set of Terence Crawford. I can envision Indongo using his length and solid grasp of range to win one to three of the first four rounds. After Crawford gets dialed in though, I don’t think anyone can beat him south of welterweight. In truth, however, we don’t know how good Indongo really isn’t or isn’t. All we have are one left hand and twelve rounds versus Ricky Burns. It isn’t a wide enough sample size to be particularly instructive. That level of unknown is a big reason why I am looking forward to the event.
The televised undercard fight will feature top light heavyweight contender Oleksandr Gvozdyk (13-0, 11 KOs) in against Craig Baker (17-1, 13 KOs). Baker is game and had a heck of a three round war with Edwin Rodriguez in his one loss, but he is in over his head here. Gvozdyk is supremely talented. He will style on Baker. The ESPN broadcast begins at 10 PM eastern.
Before that, however, is the WatchESPN preview/preliminary broadcast which starts way earlier at 6:30. Fighting on that show will be known names such as Dillian Whyte, Brandon Jennings, Mike Alvardo, Mike Reed, and Shakur Stevenson. Nicholas Walters was supposed to be there too, but he just dropped out with an illness. All these guys are in easy matches, but it still looks like a good way to spend a Saturday evening into night to me.
