Undefeated WBO 140lb champ Terence Crawford (27-0, 19 KOs) did what everyone thought he would do tonight in smacking around little lightweight Dierry Jean (29-2, 20 KOs) for nine rounds until the non-competitive sparring match was halted in the 10th round by referee Tony Weeks at the Century Link Center in Omaha, Nebraska.
By the time the smoke had cleared for this mismatch, Jean had been dropped three times in getting put down once in the 1st, 9th and 10th rounds. The fight was ready to be stopped in the 10th round anyway because Jean was no longer throwing any punches back at Crawford, and was just running for safety. The end came at 2:30 of the 10th.
Jean landed some shots every now and then, but it was just so one-sided that it wasn’t really much of a fight. It was more interesting watching Crawford fight Yuriorkis Gamboa last year, and even that was a mismatch in size. The 5’6” Jean was giving away two inches in height and quite a bit in the power department.
Top Rank promoter Bob Arum wants to match Crawford against Manny Pacquiao now. It’s going to be up to Pacquiao to decide if he wants to face Crawford or if he wants to go for bigger money fights against more popular fighters with larger fan bases than Crawford, who really is only popular in Omaha, Nebraska.
If Pacquiao chooses to take the smaller money fight against Crawford, it would come across to some boxing fans like he’s doing the 83-year-old Arum a big favor, because he needs Crawford to face a big name like Pacquiao so that he can increase his popularity. Crawford is becoming more popular, but it’s really slow growth and not the kind of growth we’re seeing from Gennady Golovkin, who is sky rocking in terms of his popularity.
“I’m ready. Bob [Arum], make it happen,” Crawford said after tonight’s mismatch against Jean. “You just got to watch and see.”
Pacquiao has had some really disastrous fights in the last two years when it comes to PPV fights. His bouts against Chris Algieri and Brandon Rios were fights that brought in low PPV buys. The only fights that brought in good money was the Tim Bradley and Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight. If Pacquiao agrees to fight Crawford, he’ll be likely dooming himself for another low PPV fight.
It’s unclear how much money Pacquiao will lose out by taking a fight against Crawford rather than facing someone like Amir Khan, Miguel Cotto, Bradley or Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, but I’d have to guess it would be huge money. I think it would be a mistake for Pacquiao to take that fight, because he already had fights that brought in low PPV buys against Rios, Algieri and Joshua Clottey in the past.
Pacquiao should have learned by now that certain fighters don’t bring in the kind of PPV buys that are needed to bring in the big money. Khan, the winner of the Cotto-Canelo or Bradley would be the best for Pacquiao if Floyd Mayweather Jr. doesn’t launch a comeback and show interest in a rematch with him.
The undercard for tonight’s Crawford-Jean fight was so bad that I’m not going to waste time discussing it. Just picture in your mind the worst mismatches you can think of and that’s what we had in the undercard. It didn’t look like much effort was put into assembling the undercard for this fight at all.
Other fights on this card if you want to call them fights:
Andy Ruiz UD 8 Raphael Zumbano Love
Mikael Zewski TKO 5 Ayi Bruce
Evgeny Gradovich SD 8 Aldimir Silva
Julian Rodriguez UD 4 Alvaro Ortiz
Alex Saucedo UD 6 Angel Martinez
Alfredo Martinez UD 4 Darin Hampton
Zolt Daranyi TKO 2 Shawn Wilson