Terence Crawford fought 42 times and was rarely in trouble, though he has admitted one round still sticks out as being the toughest he ever had to get through.
Crawford is one of the pound-for-pound greats of his generation. He is one of only a couple of boxers who have ever been undisputed in three different divisions and was a stylist who could box, move, carried plenty of power and had a solid chin.
He retired last summer after beating fellow great Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez to claim all four of the major super-middleweight belts, which means he won world titles in five divisions overall.
The American beat the likes of Amir Khan, Kell Brook, Errol Spence Jr and Shawn Porter, though he did hit the canvas against the underdog Egidijus Kavaliauskas in 2019, but it was controversially not ruled a knockdown and ‘Bud’ went on to win by ninth round TKO.
Despite that, speaking to The Real Report, Crawford revealed that one round of his 2014 battle with Olympic gold medallist Yuriorkis Gamboa is the one he remembers as the toughest he ever had to get through.
“Gamboa. He just caught me [with a right hand]. [I was] being cocky. My leg got stiff. That’s the only time I’ve ever been hurt that bad in a fight. That had a lot to do with the weight, too. Losing all that weight; not being able to get all the fluids back in my brain. So, when he caught me, I was like, ‘Damn’.”
Crawford gathered his senses in time to knock out the then-undefeated Gamboa in the 9th round to retain his WBO lightweight title.
