Terence Crawford considered himself a small junior welterweight before he moved up to the welterweight division five years ago.
The undefeated three-weight world champion has still won each of his seven fights at the 147-pound limit either by knockout or technical knockout. Errol Spence Jr. is unbeaten and better than any of the seven welterweights Crawford has stopped, yet the 5-foot-8 Crawford doesn’t seem the least bit concerned about the height and weight advantages that the 5-foot-10 Spence will possess when he enters the ring July 29 for their Showtime Pay-Per-View main event at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas ($84.99).
“I don’t worry about it,” Crawford said during a virtual press conference Wednesday. “Listen, when you talk about size, you talk about Jeff Horn. They said Jeff Horn was one of the biggest welterweights other than Spence. When you talk about size, you talk about Shawn Porter. You know, me and Shawn Porter was in the amateurs together. I was at 132 when he was at 165.
“You know, [Jose] Benavidez [Jr.], he was a big welterweight. I don’t know. Like I’m always fighting bigger welterweights, so that’s nothing new. I’m always the smaller guy. Even when I was at 140, I was the smaller guy. You know, at ’35, I might was tall, but I was the smaller guy. So, being the smaller guy, you know, never made me think, ‘Oh, man, this guy’s too big.’ It’s cool. The bigger they is, the harder they fall.”
Crawford (39-0, 30 KOs) battered Australia’s Horn on his way to a ninth-round stoppage in June 2018, when the Omaha, Nebraska native won the WBO welterweight title he’ll defend versus Spence. He stopped Benavidez in the 12th round of his first title defense in October 2018.
Horn and Benavidez were undefeated when Crawford beat them.
Crawford also stopped Porter, who lost a 12-round split decision to Spence in September 2019. Porter (31-4-1, 17 KOs), a former IBF and WBC welterweight champ, is the most accomplished welterweight Crawford has beaten.
Spence (28-0, 22 KOs) still doesn’t consider that 10th-round stoppage in November 2021 the most noteworthy win of Crawford’s career because Spence doesn’t think Porter trained for his showdown with Crawford the way Porter prepared for his title unification fight against Spence, who owns the IBF, WBA and WBC welterweight titles.
Crawford is slightly favored by most sportsbooks to win a 12-round, 147-pound title fight that, short of it resulting in a draw or no-contest, will crown boxing’s first fully unified welterweight champion of the four-belt era.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.