Terence Crawford took all of twelve rounds to defeat defending champion Israil Madrimov in his debut at super-welterweight.
The 36-year-old from Omaha, Nebraska became a four-division titlist at the first point of asking with the win, overcoming what many recognise as his toughest test to date.
There were flashes of Crawford’s brilliance throughout but Madrimov put up a good fight, scoring his own shots and feinting to keep ‘Bud’ out of a consistent rythym. In the end, it was scored unanimously to the American with cards reading 116-112, 115-113 and 115-113 – something Madrimov’s promoter Eddie Hearn took extreme issue with.
Speaking on his podcast, former world champion and Crawford opponent Shawn Porter said he scored it 117-111 in favour of the new champion.
“Me and Terence Crawford have never had this conversation before. I ain’t been in camp with this kid since we was in the amateurs, but I talk all the time about a fighter having to seperate himself from his opposition in order to show that he’s the winner and that he’s on another level and that’s exactly what happened in the twelfth round.
There’s a lot of people that watch boxing that watch boxing that think they understand and know it. I’m not discrediting anybody or attacking anybody, but you truly don’t know what a champion knows. I’m ringside and I’m seeing what I’m seeing, I know because I’m looking through a different lens from anybody else. When I look at the fight – and I scored it 9-3, at worst 8-4 – another thing I saw in that twelfth round, ‘oh maybe he thinks he’s down,’ no, he’s trying to seperate himself.”
