If Terence “Bud” Crawford wants to make his case as the greatest non-heavyweight in the history of boxing, he gave himself a helluva Exhibit A late Saturday night in Vegas: Crawford took Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s soul while earning a unanimous decision win that gave him all of his title belts, too. Crawford remains undefeated and now holds the undisputed super middleweight championship, the only guy in the sport’s so-called “four-belt era” to have ever so dominated three separate weight classes.
But after the hyper-anticipated showdown, fought before a packed stadium and a huge semi-non pay-per-view TV audience, comes a hangover for fight fans. Crawford, Canelo, and, hell, all of boxing face the same huge dilemma: What do we do now?
What remains as indisputable as Crawford’s latest title: This was a big deal. Boxing doesn’t have events that garner as much mainstream attention as this fight did anymore. And not just because of the Q rating of the combatants. The card was broadcast by Netflix, a streamer which announced in early 2025 that it had surpassed 300 million subscribers. (All the staff behind the counter of my favorite rib joint in D.C. were talking about the fight when I walked in early Saturday evening; my wife said the guy at her garage at work brought up the fight when she entered Monday morning. That’s not normal.) Netflix hasn’t yet disclosed how many folks actually watched. Max Kellerman, a fight-calling veteran who was returning to ring work after an ESPN-imposed paid hiatus that lasted two years, said repeatedly that Crawford vs. Canelo would be “the most-watched title fight in 47 years.” He was referring to the Sept. 15, 1978 rematch between Muhammad Ali and Leon Spinks, which was broadcast on the ABC network to a primetime audience in the U.S. of over 90 million, most of whom used rabbit ears to get the free signal to their televisions.
Since this brought in a much larger non-hardcore audience than a normal fight, many of the viewers could have seen the proceedings as too much of a chess match (albeit a chess match with headbutts) and not enough of a barroom brawl. Both Canelo and Crawford tried showing what they do best. Only one succeeded.
Canelo, now 63-3-2, has a fairly complete arsenal of offensive weapons, along with incredible defense and a chin made of steel. Though he landed a couple huge left hands to Crawford’s breadbasket in the second and third rounds, Canelo was unable to sustain the sort of body attack that’s been a staple of his fight plans, and has broken down so many opponents over his Hall of Fame-friendly 20-year career as a pro.
“He wasn’t hitting the body or anything,” Crawford said after the fight. “He was hitting my elbow because I was blocking it.”
With the body blows not reaching their mark, Canelo repeatedly tried to catch Crawford with looping overhand rights. That wasn’t going to happen. Going in, the main story line was Crawford having gone up two weight classes, from super welterweight and its 154-pound limit to 168-pound super middleweight, just to get a shot at Canelo, the biggest draw and the guy with the sturdiest legacy in contemporary boxing. The adage that a good big man beats a good little man exists for a reason. So Crawford, likely wary of the power he’d face from the biggest opponent of his career, spent the early rounds sizing up Canelo. But by the midway point of the fight, after a few early clinches in which both men looked to be of equal size and strength, Crawford seemed to know he could take whatever punch Canelo threw at him. And from the sixth round on, Crawford was in control. Other than a ninth-round accidental headbutt, which opened a gash over Crawford’s right eye, the challenger never seemed the least bit hurt.
Crawford’s a natural right-hander who regularly fights from a southpaw stance, a quirk that gives him a very powerful jab. Crawford also has a 74-inch reach, remarkable for a 5-foot-8 fighter; he’s got a bigger wing span than even Dmitrii Bivol, a light heavyweight who tortured Canelo with jabs in their 2022 encounter and gave him his most recent loss. Crawford’s jab kept Canelo at bay; Canelo landed only 16 jabs all night.
Canelo’s frustration with his inability to hit and not be hit by Crawford boiled over in the championship rounds. After eating yet another Crawford jab in the 11th round, Canelo backed away, put his hands down to his sides, and shook his head in an apparent admission that he just didn’t have what it took to win.
But boxing scoring is hardly an exact science. And although Crawford, who walked to the ring carrying a guitar as the soundtrack of the 1995 Antonio Banderas feature film Desperado played over the stadium PA, carried himself throughout the night as if he was winning, there were few, if any, of the 12 rounds that favored either fighter by any blatant margin. Crawford, who stayed focused while his opponent visibly was coming apart late, won the last two rounds on all three judges’ scorecards. In the end, two of the three judges had Crawford up by just two points. So had Canelo done enough to win either the 11th or 12th rounds, he would have gotten a draw and retained his undisputed title. Canelo’s fits, therefore, might well have cost him the fight and his belts.
Crawford hinted at an apology for not giving the fans a brawl in a postfight interview. He said his spirit was willing to mix things up, but his coaches were not. Crawford said he was planning on fighting orthodox to surprise Canelo. But during training camp, Brian McIntyre, who has been working with Crawford since 2001 in Omaha, said don’t even think about switching lead hands. Crawford also said that during the fight whenever he hinted at straying from the game plan, he got nixed.
“I wanted to do a little more,” Crawford said, “but my coaches wanted me to keep doing what I was doing that was working, you know, so I had to make sure that I was disciplined and keep doing what was working.”
Canelo, meanwhile, said he also wished he’d hit Crawford a lot harder and more often than he did. Only two things stopped him: Crawford’s skills, and Canelo’s own worn-out body.
“You know what? Sometimes you try, and your body cannot go right. That’s my frustration. Maybe I can figure out Crawford, but my body cannot go anymore. So I try, but my body just won’t let me go and you need to accept it. That’s it,” said Canelo, sitting at the podium of the postfight press conference wearing a black tank top and several facial abrasions left behind by Crawford’s mitts. “He’s a great fighter. A great fighter. He knows how to move, and everything.”
After the final bell, talk turned to legacies and Crawford’s place in history. He is now 42-0 in his career. Floyd Mayweather left the fight game undefeated at 50-0. And while Crawford’s undisputed belt count is untouchable, so is Mayweather’s opponent roster. Leading up to the 2013 fight with Canelo, Mayweather was coming off a big-fight binge in which he’d dispatched Oscar De La Hoya, Ricky Hatton, Juan Manuel Marquez, Shane Mosley, Victor Ortiz, and Miguel Cotto. That’s class. Other than Spence and now Canelo and Spence, none of Crawford’s conquests is close to a household name.
Canelo has a unique perspective, therefore, on which all-timer was a better fighter. And when he was asked at the postfight presser to compare Crawford with Mayweather, Canelo didn’t hesitate in naming his pick.
“I think Crawford is way better than Floyd Mayweather,” Canelo said.
There’s really nothing left in the sport for Crawford or Canelo to prove. Nobody’s talking about a rematch. This win was definitive enough. But neither fighter hinted that they’d be hanging up the gloves.
“I will go on,” said Canelo, who now has fought a remarkable 532 rounds as a pro. He did not mention any particular opponents, however.
Crawford said he hasn’t figured out who’s got next. Canelo has dominated the super middleweight ranks for five years. There’s really nobody in the division now with the name recognition or ring résumé that would guarantee them a shot at Crawford. But Crawford did say he won’t be repeating a mistake Canelo made in his career by moving up to light heavyweight (174-pound limit) to face Bivol.
“No, we ain’t going up that much,” he said.
Crawford also said he’s not planning to go down in class to fight again at 154 pounds, either.
All of boxing faces the same dilemma of how to follow Canelo vs. Crawford. And the immediate future looks bleak. The powers that be apparently didn’t have any plan to take advantage of the bounce that this fight should have brought the sport.
“The hope was this could kick off a golden age of boxing,” Kellerman said near the end of the Netflix broadcast. Alas, the only upcoming fight that got promoted during the telecast was the next installment of the Jake Paul circus: Paul vs. Tank Davis. Paul, who only took up boxing as an adult to help his influencer career, weighed in at just under 200 pounds his last fight. Davis, one of the greatest little-man fighters of his generation, is a 135-pound champ (career mark: 30-0-1) who has only once fought above lightweight. Maybe a rematch isn’t such a bad idea after all…
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