Terence Crawford is your new WBO welterweight titleholder. He absolutely dominated Jeff Horn start to finish in Las Vegas tonight to further affirm his position as one of the two best fighters in the world. The welterweight division is on notice.
The first round was pretty intense. Terence Crawford landed a nice counter pretty much immediately, but it didn’t take long for Jeff Horn to come back with a big clean right hand of his own. The rest of the time felt like watching two snakes coiled and ready to strike. Bud probably got a little more done to take the round, but only narrowly. He won the second too on body work, though it was much less interesting to watch as the two men fell into clinches over and over.
Crawford turned it up in the third. He started getting lose and really letting his hands go in combination to great effect. Horn got a few shots of his own in, but there was no question who won the round. The fourth was more of the same as the former undisputed junior welterweight titleholder landed pot shots basically at will. The fifth and sixth weren’t any different either. Crawford was particularly aggressive in round five, especially in throwing and pushing Horn around when he tried to clinch. He was definitely displaying some of that meanness that the HBO team used to be in love with.
After losing ever round in the first half of the fight, the Australian defending titleholder did come out and land a few right hands in the seventh. He definitely didn’t win the round, but we were reaching the point of him doing anything at all being noteworthy in a hurry. There was nothing to celebrate for Jeff Horn in the eighth. He was beat up pretty badly and staggered at the final bell. He wouldn’t hear the final bell in the ninth. Crawford kept up on the gas pedal and battered the soon to be former titleholder around the ring, dropping him face down onto his gloves along the ropes. Horn kept going gamely, but Crawford kept up the ferocious assault until Robert Byrd stepped to save him.
Terence Crawford is your new WBO welterweight titleholder. Here is to he and Top Rank being able to work with PBC to make some of the fights we really want to see. It probably won’t happen, but we can dream. Post-fight Crawford said he needed to prove his physical strength and called out the other titleholders in the division.
In the co-main event, former junior lightweight titleholder Jose Pedraza (24-1, 12 KOs) picked up a fun win in his Top Rank debut over Mexican brawler Antonio Moran (23-2, 16 KOs) over ten rounds. There was no question about the decision as it was rightfully in Pedraza’s favor across the board, but the fight was competitive as the three 96-94 the scores indicate. Moran was much more limited in terms of skill, but he was always there fighting back with some success. He did it with a badly cut nose from the second round on too. Pedraza was particularly effective with his body work towards the end of the fight.
