Is Terence Crawford Ready to Take on Manny Pacquiao?
Terence Crawford had his big audition on Saturday night in his backyard at the CenturyLink Center in Omaha, Nebraska, and passed with flying colors. It couldn’t have gone any better.
He dominated Dierry Jean, a decent but unspectacular opponent there for just that purpose, over 10 one-sided rounds before referee Tony Weeks saw enough to pull the plug.
The message coming into the fight (at least from the HBO crew and many members of the media) revolved around Crawford’s claims (along with Gennady Golovkin and Roman Gonzalez, two other HBO fighters) to pound-for-pound supremacy.
The message coming out of the fight was whether he was ready/worthy of facing Manny Pacquiao next April in what, per ESPN.com’s Dan Rafael, will reportedly be the icon’s last fight before pursuing a full-time career in Filipino politics.
The answer to that question, unfortunately and perhaps unpopularly, is no.
No disrespect to HBO, and understanding of the need in a competitive market to develop young talent, but it's jumping the gun here, just a bit.
Crawford, for all his immense natural talents (he easily belongs in the pound-for-pound conversation on this measure alone) just hasn’t been managed or built into the type of star for that kind of moment. Yet.
Now, you can say that about a lot of fighters.
True.
In many cases a young fighter just needs that one opportunity, one moment to shine and prove that he can be a big star, and he takes advantage and hits one out of the park. The torch passes and this type of article looks foolish in hindsight.
It’s entirely possible that Pacquiao is ripe for the picking. He’ll be a bad loss, nearly one year and a shoulder surgery removed from his last fight, a disappointingly wide decision defeat at the hands of longtime rival Floyd Mayweather in boxing’s richest ever prizefight.
You could certainly see why Top Rank, which promotes both Pacquiao and Crawford, would love this matchup.
Pacquiao, retirement looming or not, was winding down his career anyway with few logical places to go, and there’s a need for a new star to step up atop the promotional company’s pecking order as its next premier attraction.
Crawford can and will be that.
He’s patient, plotting two steps ahead of his foe, intelligent, showing an elite boxing IQ and understanding of the game and has the power and mean streak to finish when he has his man in trouble.
But there’s no need to rush it.
A big fight like this needs time to build and gain momentum, and there’s a very real question of whether mainstream boxing fans (not the hardcore sort who are probably laughing at my every word by this point) will buy Crawford as a final foe for Pacquiao.
They might have.
But his momentum has stalled in the last calendar year after a brilliant 2014 campaign that saw him awarded Fighter of the Year honors by the Boxing Writers Association of America and ESPN.
He went on the road early in the year and took a world title from Ricky Burns in notoriously road-fighter hostile Scotland, where Ray Beltran had been robbed of an obvious decision just six months prior.
Crawford then dominated a pair of top contenders (Yuriorkis Gamboa and Beltran) to close out the year and leave fans hoping for more in the new one.
Unfortunately, they haven’t gotten much beyond a pair of easy wins over foes who weren’t sexy and who weren’t picked by anyone to have much of a chance to compete, much less win.
The talent is there, without a doubt, but the accomplishments and cache beyond Omaha are a potential snag for this type of event.
Nothing is wrong with building a brand in a nontraditional market (which has been a smashing success in this case), but his ability to draw beyond its confines isn’t yet proved, and in a sport where money talks, that matters.
You can’t blame Crawford or even hold much of this against him. That’s not the point here.
He’s a young fighter working his way through the ranks on the back of immense talent that will one day (if not already) land him in conversations among the best fighters on the planet regardless of weight class.
He’s taken care of all the business laid at his feet in impressive fashion, but the blame belongs with those who didn’t place more business in front of him. A young fighter, especially one with these type of reachable aspirations, needs to fight more than twice a year.
It’s marketing 101.
People can’t demand you if they don’t see you, and they need to do both to land a fish as large and significant as Manny Pacquiao.
Crawford hasn’t done that…
Yet.
