Terence Crawford hung up the gloves without suffering a defeat, but there is one former world champion who believes that he would have knocked ‘Bud’ out, if they had been able to agree to a fight.
Crawford’s superstardom skyrocketed during his final fights, becoming a multi-divisional undisputed champion with a spectacular stoppage victory over welterweight rival Errol Spence Jr to finally receive the plaudits that his skill merited.
A win over Israil Madrimov further proved Crawford’s talent, but it was his history-making triumph over Canelo Alvarez that saw the Omaha operator recognised as a true pound-for-pound great.
However, before moving up to super-welterweight and facing Madrimov, Crawford had been linked to a showdown with 147lb up-and-comer Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis, who went on to become a unified welterweight world champion.
Speaking to The Daily Mail, the Philadelphian shared his belief that he would have knocked Crawford out if they ever came to blows, when quizzed on how their fight would have played out.
“[It would have ended with] me, victorious. I’m stopping [him and] anybody, for sure.
“That ain’t [just] what I am supposed to say, that is what I know. I am like that. Everybody that knows me, that is around me, knows that the higher the occasion is, the higher the event is, the stakes – you know how I get. I start tweaking, I get nasty.”
Whilst Ennis believes that Crawford refused to fight him at that point, ‘Bud’ maintains that Ennis had the opportunity to take him on earlier in his career, before he fought Shawn Porter back in 2020.