Terence Crawford says his last remaining goal in the sport of boxing is to fight and beat Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez for the undisputed super-middleweight championsip.
The three-weight world champion will attempt to make that four on August 3 when he moves to super-welterweight to challenge undefeated titlist Israil Madrimov. A win will be impressive, but ‘Bud’ then wants to jump up two more divisions for the Canelo fight.
Speaking on Pro Box TV, former world champion turned analyst Paulie Malignaggi said plainly that he feels it’s too much of an ask.
“I think pound-for-pound [Crawford] is better, he’s overall more skilled, but I think Canelo is too big. He’s too big. Don’t get me wrong, if I’m wrong it wouldn’t be the first time I’m wrong about Crawford.
I thought Jeff Horn might be too big cause he’s a physical 154-pounder and I thought Crawford being an ex-lightweight may not be able to hang, even if he was more skilled, with the physicality of Horn. I was wrong there, but now you’re asking me to jump again a couple more weight classes.”
Malignaggi went as far to say that he wasn’t interesting in seeing it happen, but knew a certain audience would be.
“I don’t know, I think it’s too much. I think it would reel in all the casual idiots and they’d probably make it a bigger fight than it needs to be. I’d rather see Crawford in more interesting match-ups from a boxing perspective. I don’t think Crawford and Canelo is interesting from a boxing perspective, I think it’s interesting from an idiot casual perspective.”
He then agreed with Canelo, who has said he would get no credit for beating a smaller man in Crawford. Malignaggi believes the fact 168lbs contenders David Benavidez and David Morrell are knocking on the door would make this look worse.
“Canelo has both Morrell and Benavidez in his weight class. If he goes and fights Crawford it will look bad.”
