Soon to be boxing hall-of-famer, Saul ‘Canelo’ Alarez, was full of praise for his counterpart Terence ‘Bud’ Crawford moved up two divisions to challenge Canelo Alvarez and scored one of the biggest win of his career.
Terence Crawford beat Canelo via a unanimous decision victory to win the undisputed super middleweight championship on Saturday at Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas in the USA.
Crawford, a four-division world champion, put his name in the history books by becoming the first men’s fighter in the four-belt era (since 2007) to become an undisputed champion in three weight classes (junior welterweight, welterweight and super middleweight).
Crawford had fought most of his career between 135 and 147 pounds. He moved up a weight class to 154 in August 2024 and defeated Israil Madrimov to win the WBA junior middleweight title before taking a year to build up for the fight against Canelo.
Canelo is also a four-division champion. His only three losses are to Crawford, Floyd Mayweather in 2013 and Dmitry Bivol in 2022, when Canelo moved up to light heavyweight to challenge for a world title. The loss to Crawford snapped a six-fight winning streak.
In a post interview, Canelo “We know Crawford is a great fighter and I did what I was supposed to do and I tried in every way and I trained really hard. And he deserve all the credit. I tried my best tonight and I just couldn’t figure out the style” Canelo asserted.
As to what part of Crawford’s style gave him the most trouble, Canelo responded “Everything, he (Crawford) has everything”.
