Canelo Alvarez’s decision to begin negotiations with William Skalla on January 10th for a potential fight in May puts Terence Crawford in an uncertain position.
Four-division world champion Crawford had hoped to be the next opponent of unified super middleweight champion Canelo (62-2-2, 39 KOs), but it looks like he won’t get that mega-money fight.
Crawford options
Terence, 37, will now have to start thinking about fighting someone else to keep him busy while he waits. He hopes Canelo will pay him in September. I don’t know if it will then, but you can understand why Crawford would believe it would happen.
If Crawford doesn’t retire, these would be his best options for legacy and money:
– Sebastian Fundora
– Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis
– Tim Tsziu
– Serhii Bohachuk
– Bahram Murtazaliyev
Fundora will be busy with his expected title defense against Errol Spence and likely won’t be available until the second half of 2025. So if Crawford wants to fight him, he’ll have to sit on the shelf for extra time.
He has already been sidelined since the narrow win over Israil Madrimov on August 3rd. We’re probably looking at Crawford being out of the ring for about a year and a half if he decides to wait for the match with Fundor. It’s not the smartest thing for Crawford to do, but if he’s not willing to risk being beaten by Murtazaliyev, Bohachuk, Tsue or Ennis, it’s understandable why he would choose to wait.
Most of those fights would require Turki Al-Shiekh to finance them for Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs) to be willing to fight any of those guys. He’s not the PPV guy that one of the promoters would be willing to hand him a huge guaranteed purse and hope the match sells out.
As we saw in Terence’s last match against Israil Madrimov, he is not a PPV attraction. That’s why Turki needs to step in so Crawford can fight any dangerous fighters at 154, like Murtazali or Bohachuk. Those would be tough fights for Crawford even if he was young, but now that he’s 40, those fighters would be a nightmare for him.
Undisputed at 154?
That Crawford is bravehe would take on IBF 154lb champion Murtazali (23-0, 17 KOs) in a unification bout to put himself in position to face Fundor for the undisputed championship in the second half of 2025.
If Terence can win the IBF belt, he can put pressure on Fundora to fight him. Becoming the undisputed junior middleweight champion would boost Crawford’s stock in the boxing world, which could help him win a fight against Canelo.
It still wouldn’t be a given that Bud would win the fight because, as we’ve seen before, Canelo can’t be pressured to fight. He could ignore Crawford for the rest of his career, like he did with David Benavides, and not lose sleep over the criticism he receives from fans.