Terence Crawford finally plays the game

Whether you were interviewing Terence Crawford or watching him be interviewed, the internal monologue not only sounded the same but served the same purpose. It made up for the lack of two-way conversation. It helped fill the silence.

‘Make him comfortable,’ would have been your first thought, aware that this 2014 excursion was his first trip outside America to box professionally. It was also his first world title fight, which meant he was still relatively unknown and unaccustomed to being the center of attention. ‘In that case, ask him about his upbringing. Ask him about his inspirations, idols. Ask him, too, how long he has dreamed of a moment like this and whether he always knew it would one day come. Ask him, as they all do, how training has gone and pretend that: A, what he says is honest, and, B, you care about the answer.’

When you get nothing from him, you panic.

‘Ask him about Scotland, Glasgow in particular. Ask him about Ricky Burns, the man he will fight in Glasgow. The lightweight champion. The home boy. The one who smiles. The one who talks.’

Still nothing.

He says he knows nothing about Burns, only that he is the man he must beat. He says that the one fight of his he has seen, Burns’ last, he felt he lost. Great. He then sees the discomfort in your eyes. You are, in his eyes, no different than an opponent. “I am not here to talk,” he stresses. “Strictly business.”

You now wonder if he can — talk, that is. You wonder if he is stunted or simple, a genius only in the ring. You have heard he is a good fighter but know that it takes more than just being good to make it as a world champion and boxing superstar these days. You must also be outspoken, marketable, agreeable. This man, Crawford, is seemingly none of these things. He is instead monosyllabic. He refuses to play the game. There is nothing in his eyes except darkness. No spark, no life, no interest. “I do my talking with these,” he says, showing his hands. “You’ll see Saturday.”

‘He better be good. Better than good. Otherwise, it’s just rude, this behavior. It’s arrogant. It’s pretentious. It will get him nowhere. Has nobody ever thought to tell him that? Apparently not.’

It has now gone silent again. He licks his lips; dry mouth on account of cutting weight, perhaps. Or maybe he is just getting agitated and wants to move on to the next idiot with questions. ‘Ask him for a fight prediction if that’s the case. Let him put you out of your misery.’

“Victory,” he says.

You refrain from asking him to elaborate.

Less an interview than a staredown, time spent in the company of Terence Crawford in 2014 became an exercise in patience and perseverance. He was, back then, a 26-year-old still finding both his feet and his voice, and appeared comfortable in only two environments: One, at home in Omaha, Nebraska, surrounded by friends and family; and two, in the boxing ring, surrounded by danger.

Anywhere else, the shutters came down. In Glasgow, for instance, Crawford spent much of the week questioning everybody he met, gave them nothing, and could see no reason for any of it — the talking, the interviewing, the interest — when there was a perfectly good fight to follow; a fight in which answers would be provided to questions and Crawford, at last, could formally introduce himself.

That, in truth, was the only kind of conversation he knew. It was the one language in which Crawford was fluent and any attempt to have him converse in other ways was about as odd as asking Dylan to dance or Spielberg to sing. If, from him, you wanted answers, just wait. In time we would get them.

“We knew he was well thought of and highly touted, but that still wasn’t enough to prepare us for what we got,” says Billy Nelson, Ricky Burns’ coach the night Burns faced Crawford. “To be perfectly honest, he’s the best fighter I’ve ever seen live. His balance, movement, everything. His balance from both stances, orthodox and southpaw, and his shot selection and timing was unbelievable. He’s just the complete package.”

The answers, once ready, were quick and unequivocal. By Round 2, in fact, it was abundantly clear that the language Crawford was using to express himself was to Ricky Burns something foreign, in need of translation.

“I knew in the second round,” says Nelson. “I knew he would be good, but not that good. I thought it would be a good, even fight. He was the mandatory [challenger for the WBO title], so we knew he was deserving of the chance and had earned it.

“Ricky gave Crawford a decent contest, but there was no doubting the winner.”

On the night, Crawford did no more than what he had said he would do all week in Scotland: He got his victory. He didn’t need to shout about it beforehand, nor did he need to go into specifics. As far as he was concerned, the stare alone should have been enough to have you know that he meant what he said.

“Back when we first saw him in Glasgow, he was confident but you could tell there was a bit of apprehension there,” recalls Nelson. “He’s the full package now, though; the best fighter on the planet.

“He has over the years been nothing but a model professional. You have all these clowns who throw tables about and throw their heads at each other at weigh-ins, and then you have someone like Crawford who has done none of that. Those fighters don’t have anything like the quality and class of Crawford once he gets in the ring. We saw that when he came to Glasgow. He didn’t say a lot, but he didn’t need to, did he? He said what needed to be said in the ring, with his hands.”

Nine years after outpointing Ricky Burns to win the WBO lightweight title, Terence Crawford found himself traipsing through a busy MGM Grand in Las Vegas to attend a public workout ahead of a welterweight superfight against Errol Spence Jr.

And that, as it turned out, was all he did: Attend.

Despite the expectation of one, there was to be no actual workout that afternoon, nor did Crawford seem all that enthused to be there — in Vegas, around fans, in a ring. In the ring, he did no more than stand, roll his shoulders and crack his knuckles. He was then interviewed — very briefly — by Ray Flores, an announcer whose internal monologue was at that point no different than ours, the people watching.

‘Make him comfortable,‘ we all thought. ‘He might open up that way. Ask him about Vegas, which is clearly not his kind of place, and whether he is excited to have his name up in lights. Ask him about Spence, his opponent, and what he plans on doing to him on Saturday. Ask him if he feels the fight is as big as it should be given the caliber of the two fighters involved. Ask him if a big win in Vegas means he is the new Mayweather. Ask him if this is the culmination of everything he has been working toward — his reward for a quiet career spent in the shadows. Ask him, ‘What is your favorite part of fight week?”

“Nothing,” Crawford said to that, with not even the slightest hint of a smile.

“It takes all kinds,” says Stephen Espinoza, who, in 2023, was President of Showtime Sports, the network offering Crawford vs. Spence as a pay-per-view that July. “The reality is, there isn’t one mould for a superstar. If you look at the NBA, for example, not everybody is Dennis Rodman. You’ve got a Michael Jordan and a Steph Curry. Both are suitably charismatic but they’re not the most flamboyant personalities. They let their performances speak for them.

“I think that’s a little bit like Crawford. I think he came to a realization, somewhat late in his career, that to get to the heights he wanted to, that wasn’t going to be enough. It would be great if the world was set up so that the people with the most talent got the most attention and success, but we all know it’s not like that and talent isn’t enough. It also takes salesmanship. He has clearly become more comfortable with being a self-promoter and a salesman, but I still wouldn’t say it comes naturally to him.”

That whole week in Las Vegas, efforts were made to push both Crawford and Spence out of their comfort zones, only to be often met by resistance. Both men, it appeared, were of the same mind and believed that the fight itself was good enough to speak on their behalf and do all the selling on its own. It was during the fight that they would express themselves and decide the things everybody was asking them to decide in advance. ‘What will you do to him? How will it go? What kind of fight do you envisage?’ Those questions, to boxers unfamiliar with the language of hype and self-promotion, seem as redundant as asking them to solve an equation or speak on global politics. In response, expect only a shrug. Or, worse, a death stare.

“If anything, our society, both in the U.S. and worldwide, has gone more in the way of style over substance,” says Espinoza. “Whether that’s because of social media or something else, I think the overall trend has been that the loudest voice gets the most attention.

“But Crawford vs. Spence didn’t need the hyperbole and theatrics and angry confrontations. It showed that a fight could be successfully promoted with respect and with decorum.

“Sometimes substance does win out. Having the best fight with two respectful fighters is just as successful as having two people who are really loud and obnoxious.”

The one time it got loud and obnoxious during fight week was when the two boxers’ teams noticed there were silences to be filled and some tried filling them for attention. This, unfortunately, became an ugly theme of the pre-fight press conference, where both sides hurled insults at each other as Crawford and Spence looked on like neglected children listening to soon-to-be divorced parents argue downstairs.

For once Crawford was animated, not just agitated. Gone was the ambivalence with which he greeted strangers looking to mine him for content.

“You’ve got to calm down, brother,” he said at one stage, addressing Spence’s cousin. “Listen, man, things can get sticky real quick, and then everybody will be saying this is what we do every time we come out. Just like you’re talking, it can turn deadly real quick — on both sides. Why not support your fighter and let’s come together and make this event a success? Instead of everybody saying that when we come together, this is what happens. That’s what I want.”

Not a man to be tested, Crawford didn’t just look out at the audience that afternoon, he looked through them. He homed in on specific members of Spence’s team and he made sure that they knew, with only a look, that he was not fooling around or saying stuff for the sake of it.

Indeed, even for those of us on the periphery, whose bodies and bags were checked for weapons upon entering the T-Mobile Arena, there was a growing sense of unease only fueled by Crawford’s stare and his threat. After all, not many things are as unnerving as when a man of few words suddenly finds the words to express their deepest and darkest thoughts. Suddenly then you listen. Suddenly then everything they say becomes important and sometimes prescient.

“Everything about Terence Crawford is better than Errol Spence Jr.,” argued Crawford that Thursday. “Come fight night I’ll be proving each and every one of the doubters wrong once again and showing them Terence Crawford is the best fighter in the world. I’m not taking any credit away from Errol. He’s a great fighter. But compared to Terence Crawford, there is no comparison. I’m just the better fighter.

“He will find out the same thing that everybody else finds out. He will come in there and say, ‘Damn, I kind of underestimated this guy. On TV he looked one way and in the ring I saw three of him.’”

On Thursday he said it, then on Saturday he proved it. He proved, by stopping Errol Spence in nine rounds, that he wasn’t just superior to his welterweight rival, but that he could make a so-called superfight seem more like a routine title defense. He was, on the night, that good, Crawford. He was so good, in fact, that it was hard to see who could challenge him next or how his legacy would continue to be built beyond that special evening in July.

A rematch with Spence, the plan all along, was now off the table due to the one-sided nature of the first fight, which left Crawford as much a loser as a winner in Las Vegas. He had, in some respects, shot himself in the foot by eliminating his great rival before a true rivalry between them had even been established. If anything, he had beaten Spence too easily.

That was certainly the feeling as the crowd exited the T-Mobile Arena and began to walk up and down various escalators and along various bridges in the stifling desert heat. Some wore Spence t-shirts and others wore Crawford’s, yet it was clear that shock, awe and confusion were emotions uniting them all.

The shock and awe were the result of Crawford’s brilliance, of course, whereas the confusion had less to do with what we had just witnessed and more to do with a shared belief that Crawford might now struggle for opponents while at the peak of his powers and marketability. “It can’t be ‘Boots,’” I can recall one group saying, referring to Jaron “Boots” Ennis, a fast-rising welterweight prospect. “It’s too soon for him. You saw what he did with Errol.”

“Well, who then?”

Since beating Errol Spence so impressively on July 29, 2023, Terence Crawford has boxed just once: A 12-round decision win over Israil Madrimov last August. To get that fight, Crawford had to move up from welterweight to super welterweight and convince himself that his work in his longtime division was done and that the likes of Ennis were not worth sticking around for.

Now, a year on from that win, he has decided to move up again — not just one division but another two. He has done so not because he is tight at the weight — he clearly wasn’t — but because waiting for Crawford on Saturday at super middleweight is Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, still the biggest star in the sport. It is indeed Alvarez, the Mexican undisputed champion, whom Crawford will face in Las Vegas this weekend, and it is for Alvarez that Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs) has for the first time had to compromise and become something he isn’t: A super middleweight.

Though for 17 years Crawford has managed to stay true to himself, and never called for a fight he didn’t feel he deserved, he has in the end, like them all, had to sacrifice something to get what he wants. In this case that means moving into uncharted territory to fight a naturally bigger man. It means holding hands. It means giving something up. It means accepting that he was unable to build his profile in the aftermath of that remarkable Spence performance, yet realizing all the same that he can build his body to chase greatness through a story more basic and universal: David vs. Goliath.

In that story, Crawford, who turns 38 this month, can find respect and comfort in the underdog role; the supporting role. He will also be pleased to know that winning counts for more than anything he will say before the fight and that no win he has secured to date will speak louder than this one.

Better yet, despite the weight discrepancy, Crawford at last has a fight that requires no promotion, only performance. He has “Canelo,” the big name and the cash cow, and he has Netflix, who will on Sept. 13 take care of the rest. All Crawford must do is turn up, perform, be himself. From him, nobody expects a word. His legacy hinges on just one: Victory.