In a real stinker of a fight, Terence Crawford (29-0, 20 KOs) ran his way to a dull, dull, dull 12 round unanimous decision tonight against WBC light welterweight champion Victor Postol (28-1, 12 KOs) to win his WBC and Ring Magazine light welterweight title at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Whether you liked Crawford’s performance tonight or thought it was the equivalent of watching paint dry was based on what you like to watch in a fight.
If you like watching a fighter play keep away all night long, then Crawford was your cup of tea. If you’re the type that prefers to watch exciting fights like the ones we typically see from unbeaten middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin, then you were not a happy camper at watching Crawford run for 12 rounds. Crawford won the fight by the scores 118-107, 118-107, 117-108. I scored it 7 rounds to 5 for Crawford. He knocked Postol down twice in the 5th. Both of the knockdowns were the flash variety in which Postol was off balance and reached down with his glove on the canvas. He was knocked off balance on both occasions while backing up. Technically they were knockdowns, but on neither occasion was Postol hurt.
Referee Tony Weeks took a point away from Postol in the 11th round for throwing a rabbit punch. In fairness to Postol, Crawford had done the same thing to him twice in the fight without the referee doing anything about it. The good thing about the point deduction is that it didn’t change the outcome of the fight, as Postol was going to lose anyway.
In the 12th round, Crawford stopped running and turned to attack Postol. At the time, the crowd was booing Crawford like made due to him moving back and forth around the ring to stall out the round. Crawford was sticking his tongue out at Postol and trying to upset him. It was more upsetting to the fans that had paid to see the fight live unfortunately, because they thought they were going to see a good fight. What they saw instead was just awful running.
I don’t know what to think of this performance other than Crawford looking dreadful. His 84-year-old promoter Bob Arum wants to stick him in with Manny Pacquiao next on November 5 on HBO PPV. Speaking for myself, I don’t want to see that fight, ever. I don’t think Crawford earned it tonight with his performance. If Crawford wants to fight Pacquiao, he should earn the fight by fighting someone good and not running. I’d like to see Crawford fight Errol Spence Jr. It would be interesting to see how well Crawford does against a pressure fighter with the ability to throw to the body and fight on the inside. Postol could do neither tonight. If he knew how to fight on the inside and attack the body, he would have had Crawford in serious trouble.
Other boxing results on the card:
Oscar Valdez TKO 2 Matias “La Cobrita” Rueda
Jose Benavidez UD 10 Francisco Santana
Oleksandr Gvozdyk TKO 6 Tommy Karpency
Ryota Murata TKO 1 George Tahdooahnippah
Lenny Zappavigna TKO 6 IK Yang
Edward Williams UD 6 Christon Edwards
Stanyilav Skorokhod UD 6 Hakim Bryant
Steve Nelson TKO 4 Tim Meek