Don’t expect Terence Crawford to remain neutral as the boxing peanut gallery ruminates on who deserves to be the Fighter of the Year.
As far as the kingpin of the welterweight division is concerned, he is the runaway favorite.
In a recent post on his social media, Omaha, Nebraska’s Crawford offered full-throated endorsement of himself as the past year’s top fighter, noting that his dominant, ninth-round technical knockout of Errol Spence Jr., his lone fight of 2023, should be more than enough to assure him of that coveted spot.
What many expected to be a competitive fight quickly turned into a rout, with Crawford battering and dropping Spence multiple times before the referee halted the bout. The win made Crawford (40-0, 31 KOs) undisputed champion of the 147-pound division. Crawford achieved that milestone before as a junior welterweight.
“I’m the only fighter to beat a top five pound for pound fighter this year and the way I beat him was unmatched,” Crawford wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “2023 Fighter Of The Year Is Me. Some might say but I only fought 1 time but that 1 fight was bigger than any of the others. #facts”
Boxing fans and pundits have been fervently debating who deserves this annual distinction, which is handed out annually by various media outlets at this time of the year.
Many feel that Naoya Inoue, the Japanese dynamo, deserves to be recognized as the top fighter of the past year, especially since, unlike Crawford, he fought twice.
Inoue (26-0, 23 KOs) stopped Marlon Tapales earlier this week in Tokyo to unify all four belts in the 122-pound division; earlier in the year, Inoue knocked out then-titlist Stephen Fulton to unify three belts. The frightening puncher fully unified the 118-pound division last year. Like Crawford, Inoue has now become undisputed in two divisions.
Sean Nam is the author of Murder on Federal Street: Tyrone Everett, the Black Mafia, and the Last Golden Age of Philadelphia Boxing.