Former undisputed junior welterweight champion makes his welterweight debut this Saturday night under the bright Vegas lights to challenge WBO titleholder Jeff Horn on Top Rank on ESPN+. This is the biggest fight of a busy weekend by a good margin. Does Jeff Horn stand a chance?
Terence “Bud” Crawford (32-0, 23 KOs) is indisputably one of the top two fighters in all of the sport of boxing. The Omaha star first came into our boxing collective consciousness in 2013 on a series of HBO shows. He had to go on the road the following year to collect his first lightweight title in the UK against Ricky Burns and did so convincingly. Three months later Crawford really launched his career in his first defense against dynamic Cuban star Yuriorkis Gamboa in his first HBO main event. The two men engaged in an exciting, dynamic world level title fight in which Gamboa was down three times on route to the first loss of his career.
The Omaha native defended his belt one more time in a wide, easy decision over now current titleholder Ray Beltran before moving up for a title shot at junior welterweight. After dominating Dierry Jean to pick up that title and defending it once, Crawford went into the biggest fight of his career against surging fellow junior welterweight titleholder Viktor Postol fresh off his huge stoppage win over Lucas Matthysse. The Ukrainan proved no more of a challenge than anyone else had. Crawford dropped him twice and rolled to a dominant decision. From that point on there was no denying Bud Crawford was a special fighter.
After two more dominant stoppage defenses over John Molina Jr and Felix Diaz, Crawford managed to do the unthinkable. He brought his two belts into the ring against Namibian unified titleholder Julius Indongo’s two belts with complete divisional unification on the line. The fight was a rout. Crawford mercilessly destroyed Indongo in three, leaving him writhing on the canvas while Bud collected the final two belts in the puzzle. In doing so, Crawford joined Bernard Hopkins as the only two men to manage to win the fights and navigate boxing politics well enough to become an undisputed champion in the four belt era.
Terence Crawford is a truly 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 if Bud gives a few early rounds away too. They haven’t been able to accomplish this yet, however. 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 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 two fighters in the sport. Only Vasyl Lomachenko is potentially better.
I feel bad for Jeff Horn (18-0-1, 12 KOs). I really do. I’ll be blunt here and just say I don’t think he has a real chance in this fight. Yet, I also want to defend him and say that I firmly believe Jeff Horn is a world level welterweight. Well before the Manny Pacquiao fight, I considered Horn a really good prospect. He has deceptively quick hands, a good sense of distance, and some really solid side to side movement. He does have the habit of getting caught, but he has shown real resilience, heart, and recuperative powers too.
These traits were on display in their totality against aging Filipino legend Manny Pacquiao last summer. He used his stinging shots and laterally movement to fight on even terms with the elite welterweight through the first two thirds of the fight. Then, after receiving a pretty epic beating in the ninth round, Horn showed his heart and resilience late to come back in the fight and steal the final round. The scoring seemed pretty cut and dry with Pacquiao deserving a close, competitive, but clear decision at the end. That isn’t what we got, however, as instead Horn got a hometown decision win and a world title that he did not deserve.
Unfortunately for Horn, that has caused the boxing collective mind to lose sight of the fact that he mostly fought on entirely even terms with Manny Pacquiao. Sure, Pacman isn’t what he was at his peak, but he is still unquestionably a top welterweight. Of course Jeff Horn did not deserve that decision, but he also proved himself to be a true world level welterweight once the unbiased eye sees past the bad judging.
The problem is that it doesn’t matter. There are levels in the fight game. I say it time and time again. There are levels even at the highest tiers of the sport too. Jeff Horn is a high level fighter; Terence Crawford is transcendent. While it is a cliche, styles do make fights too. Crawford’s precision power shots are wrong for someone with Horn’s susceptibilities to single big punches on top of that fact. My expectation here is that Terence Crawford is going to look spectacular in picking apart Jeff Horn, stopping him in the 7th to 9th round range. Then poor Jeff Horn will be dismissed even more have a hell of a time ever earning real respect in the sport, fair or not.
ESPN+ has the show starting at 9:30 PM Eastern. In the co-main event, former junior lightweight titleholder Jose Pedraza (23-1, 12 KOs) returns in the co-main event against Mexico’s Antonio Moran (23-2, 16 KOs) at lightweight in Pedraza’s Top Rank debut. The preliminary broadcast begins on the same $4.99 per month streaming service at 6:30 and features a lot worth watching. Elite prospects Shakur Stevenson, Gabriel Flores Jr, and Maxim Dadashev will all be in action, the last of which in a quality step up bout against Darleys Perez. Former titleholder Jose Benavidez fights as well. It is a solid show top to bottom.
