What next for Terence Crawford after staking claim to be world’s best fighter

In one of the msot highly-anticipated matches in boxing, Terrence Crawford produced a clinical performance to defeat Errol Spence Jr. After knocking down his opponent in the second round and twice in the seventh, the 35-year-old claimed victory when the referee waved off the fight in the ninth round.

The victory saw Crawford become the undisputed welterweight world champion at Nevada’s T-Mobile Arena on Saturday night and he is now the first man to ever hold undisputed titles at two weights. “I only dreamed of being a world champion, I’m an over-achiever. No-one believed in me coming up but now everyone’s a believer,” said Crawford.

“It means everything because of who I took the belts from. They tried to blackball me, they kept me out, they told me I wasn’t good enough but I prayed to God for the chance to show the world how great Terence Crawford is and tonight I showed how great I am.” Despite being the smaller fighter heading into the bout, Crawford was superior throughout and the result took his unblemished record to 40-0-0 with 31 wins by knockout.

Spence on the other hand, lost the first match of his 11-year career but is determined to exercise his rematch clause. “Hell yeah we’re going to do it again,” he said. “I will be a lot better and it’s going to be a lot closer. We’re going to do it in December before the end of the year, we’ve definitely got to do this s*** again.”

During the post-fight press conference, Crawford provided a glowing assessment of his latest opponent “I wanted to thank Errol Spence and his team for me and him coming together and getting this fight underway,” he said.

“This is a fight that everybody wanted to see, the whole world was talking about it and we put on a great show. The winner out of this fight was going to be No.1 pound-for-pound hands down. You got Errol Spence ranked No.4 pound-for-pound and you got Terence Crawford, I was ranked No.1.

“So you got two fighters that are in the top five pound-for-pound ratings, how can they not be No.1 pound-for-pound. We trained so hard in training camp that it may look easy in the ring but these fights are never easy.” 

Aside from a rematch with Spence, the boxing world will have eyes on who Crawford will next step into the ring with. After becoming an undisputed champion for the second time, ‘Bud’ may want to achieve the feat for a third time, something no other fighter has done.

To achieve this he would have to defeat Jermell Charlo, the undisputed light middleweight world champion. He has won 35 of his 37 fights but has not fought since defeating Brian Castaño in April 2022.

He is due to return to the ring and fight Canelo Alvarez on September 30, but accepting a challenge from “Bud” would be a marquee matchup. Another undefeated star in Jaron Ennis could be on the radar for Crawford in a bid to further cement his place as the pound-for-pound king.

Crawford would have the opportunity to add to his legacy and Ennis is clearly ready to step into the ring with the champion, as he tweeted after Crawford’s latest win: “Give me the winner please. I need them straps asap! #UndisputedSoon.”