Terence “Bud” Crawford announced Tuesday that he was hanging up his gloves after a Hall of Fame career. He spent more than 12 years in the spotlight, starting with his HBO debut in 2013 and continuing on with a Ring Magazine championship at lightweight, undisputed championships at junior welterweight and welterweight, a world title at junior middleweight, and a remarkable victory over Saul “Canelo” Alvarez a few months ago to become undisputed at super middleweight.
The BoxingScene team paid tribute to Crawford by looking back at their favorite memories of the fighting pride of Omaha, Nebraska:
Lance Pugmire: Terence Crawford exuded so many of the best attributes we want in an elite athlete: brilliant, physically gifted, determined not to lose, bad-ass. He carried an insatiable desire to be appreciated, yet he also looked hard for the most minor slight so he could prove that person wrong. He was kind and generous, ornery and mean depending on the day you caught him or the memory of you he was mulling at the time.
I long listed Crawford as the top pound-for-pound fighter in the world, but the one day when I most needed him for a TV interview, he threatened to back out, asking, “Do you know what you did?” I had no idea, but he kept me squirming for minutes in front of my superiors before granting the conversation. Then, when I thought he was forever bent, he gave me 15 minutes of golden thoughts on fighting Canelo Alvarez before he’d ever opened up to anyone. Impossible to figure out – as Canelo himself discovered.
That said, I have a deep appreciation of the self-made man Crawford is, how he kept his circle tight and is fiercely loyal to those he lets in. My favorite fight memory, beyond his amazing ability to fight from both stances, was him learning he was trailing on an ESPN scorecard versus Shawn Porter and then getting off his stool and knocking out Porter. Is this the end? It might help him, at age 38, to say so now, but will he stick to it when the big money of a Canelo rematch beckons in September? I expect him back.
Kieran Mulvaney: I was fortunate enough, particularly when I was with HBO, to cover a number of Crawford’s fights as a titleholder and champion. But none of them – not even the beatdown of Errol Spence that will stand as one of his defining victories – matched the experience of being in Omaha when Crawford returned home to face Yuriorkis Gamboa in June 2014.
It wasn't just that the fight was terrific, or that the hometown crowd was turned all the way up to 11 (RIP, Rob Reiner). It was the entire experience: coaxing answers out of Crawford, at that stage of his career painfully bad at media interviews; smiling weakly at incredibly off-color jokes from Omaha’s previous notable boxer, Ron Stander, as we left the arena; Crawford's family and friends, and in particular his high-energy, high-volume mother Debra, who crossed the street from the arena each evening during fight week and descended on the hotel bar en masse in anticipation and celebration of their boy Bud’s big day; and the sense that maybe, just maybe, we were witnessing the start of something.
Lucas Ketelle: “Did you get what you were looking for?”
The words Terence Crawford said after stopping Dierry Jean in a hometown fight in Omaha, Nebraska. He didn’t take lightly the words Jean and his team said before the fight, and he wanted to remind them after the bout. It wasn’t just the talent of Crawford; it was the competitor and the meanness that made him an all-time great. When Crawford said those words in a post-fight interview, it always stood out as much as any fight he ever had.
Owen Lewis: I came to boxing late enough to miss the bulk of Crawford’s career. But I arrived in time for the fight that fans had been eagerly demanding for a half-decade: Crawford vs. Errol Spence. Everywhere I looked, experts said the fight was too close to call, a true 50-50, despite vastly different styles. I said as much to my partner, who watched the fight with me on a vacation in Quebec.
The first round bore out the previews well enough. Then, in the second, Spence leaned too far forward on a jab and Crawford promptly deposited him on his rear end with a two-piece counter. The knockdown was shocking in the moment; few expected such a dramatic show of superiority so early in the fight. A little over two years on, I now know that the combination was simply quintessential Crawford: he saw angles nobody else did and had the speed and precision to follow them the way no one else could, and it came together in an instant of unique brilliance.
Though his career had its frustrating stalled-out periods, you could grant the same praise to his body of work. Who ever expected him to fight, much less beat, Canelo Alvarez anytime before Crawford annihilated Spence? You’re getting out at just the right time, Bud, and I’d expect nothing less of you. Congratulations.
Jason Langendorf: Crawford’s announcement landed, for me, like a bummer – but not as a legitimate shock. Having climbed through six divisions and dispatched unbeaten up-and-comers (Yuriorkis Gamboa, Viktor Postol, Julius Indongo) and former titleholders (Amir Khan, Kell Brook) before finishing with an incredible flourish (wins over Errol Spence Jnr, Israil Madrimov and Canelo Alvarez), Crawford had finally fulfilled his galactic promise.
Of course we wanted more. But at age 38 and with no more lands left to conquer, he had nowhere left to go except down – one way or another. Bud will be best remembered for the Canelo spectacle (a legitimately brilliant performance, by the way), but the masterpiece that will hang in my mind is his utter destruction of Spence. It was an exhibition of razor-sharp boxing tools matched with a transcendent ring IQ and the sort of seething purpose that has elevated others (think Sonny Liston, Roberto Duran and Edwin Valero) from fighters to terrors.
It was also the culmination of Crawford wresting the controls of his career from anyone and everyone else, having established big-time boxing in his Omaha hometown, cut ties from Top Rank to strike out on his own and will himself into the fights that would finally certify his all-time-great career.
Tris Dixon: I was at the Spence fight and that, for me, was the pinnacle. I left there feeling Crawford would beat Canelo if they fought, such was Crawford’s dominance. It was one of the elite, dominant performances in modern boxing and Crawford was every bit as magnificent as his fans and he told us he was. He was brilliant.
From a business perspective, I’m sure he’s maximized his opportunities in working with Daniel Kinahan and Turki Alalshikh, and has likely always commanded top dollar – or certainly for the final acts of his lucrative career. In the ring, he was immense. He could do it all, had an unquenchable will to win and unshakeable self-belief. He had incredible gifts, but those gifts are nothing without repetition, desire, ambition, belief, mentality – and he had the lot.
Matt Christie: I spoke to Crawford face-to-face on three occasions, each meeting several years apart. He was the same on every occasion: completely disinterested. There was no warmth nor rudeness, just an obvious desire to do something other than waste his time with another idiot sticking a phone in his face. The honesty of his demeanor was only to be admired.
One of my favorite fighters of the modern era, and surely right up there among the greatest of all time, I’m delighted that he’s walked away from this sport with gazillions in his pocket, barely any miles on the clock, and the freedom to now spend his time in whichever way he pleases. In boxing, this was a job about as well done as they come.
David Greisman: My favorite memory of Terence Crawford is also my first memory of him. It was Crawford coming in on short notice, and moving up in weight, to take on Breidis Prescott on an HBO undercard. Crawford defeated Prescott, returned regularly to HBO, went on to win his first title and continued on with what has been a spectacular career.
I’ve always wished more boxers would seize opportunities rather than letting perfect be the enemy of good. Before Crawford, there was Zab Judah taking short money in his rematch with Cory Spinks and then going in, scoring the knockout and capitalizing on the figurative bet he’d made on himself. After Crawford, there was Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez substituting in to defeat Carlos Cuadras, and the junior bantamweight champion is now following a similar path to “Bud”
In hindsight, what Crawford did on that night in March 2013 was a sign of what would come over the next 12.5 years. He was always up for a challenge. He was willing to move up in weight to make those fights happen. And he was confident that all of his gifts and all of his smarts would deliver him to victory.
Declan Warrington: I had the privilege of covering one of his fights while he was in his prime, and I've always appreciated his unwillingness to suffer fools, his authenticity, and his outright refusal to present as or be anyone other than exactly who he is. That authenticity was particularly valuable in the days before Shakur Stevenson-Edwin de los Santos, shortly after the IBF had stripped him of their welterweight title – and done so so soon after the memorable stoppage of Errol Spence that made him the undisputed champion at 147lbs. "Man, fuck the IBF," started the interview he gave me and that proceeded to dominate the boxing news agenda. He wasn't angry; he was just being typically straight. Shortly before that interview started I heard him challenging the perception that Naoya Inoue deserved to be remembered as the fighter of 2023. He wasn't offended by suggestions to the contrary – he was again just being straight when he reasoned that it should be him.
It is to be hoped that he remains retired having bowed out undefeated, with far less punishment absorbed than most, off the back of his biggest victory. It also is to be admired that he achieved everything he did via his God-given abilities, instead of endlessly marketing himself in an attempt to increase his perceived appeal.
