Mikey Garcia believes Terence Crawford will defeat Shawn Porter in their WBO-ordered fight on November 20th at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas. Mikey sees Crawford having a lot of problems with Porter’s style.
Garcia thinks that Crawford (37-0, 28 KOs) will still have a lot of trouble with Porter’s aggressive fighting style, high volume punching, and his inside brawling. This is the first fight of Crawford’s 13-year professional career where there’s uncertainty whether he can win.
Up until now, Crawford has been basically handed gimmes by his promoters at Top Rank. It’s kept Crawford winning at a high cost of preventing him from becoming popular due to the weak opposition.
Crawford hasn’t had to fight anyone like Porter during his career, so there’s no way of knowing how he’ll do against that style.
The World Boxing Organization recently stepped in to order Crawford, 33, to defend his WBC welterweight title against mandatory Porter (31-3-1, 17 KOs) after appeared that he wasn’t going to fight him next.
Porter had been waiting to get a title shot against Crawford for a long time, but it never happened. It’s easy to understand why. The style that Porter uses is a bad one for Crawford, who likes to fight on the outside, change stances and counter punch.
Those are hard to do when you’re getting smothered on the inside by a fighter like Porter. Additionally, Crawford doesn’t like to get hit, and against Porter he will get hit. So, it’s not surprising that Crawford never made a move to fight Porter until it was forced on him by the WBO.
Crawford is with Top Rank, whereas Porter, 33, is signed with PBC. That in itself would make it next to impossible for the two fighters to be matched against either out without the WBO ordering it.
“Crawford wins but Porter’s style is going to give him a lot of problems,” said Mikey Garcia to Fighthype. “Porter’s style, the aggression, fighting on the inside, a short guy like that, is going to give Crawford trouble. Do you remember Porter – Spence in how that was?
“Porter’s style is very difficult to handle. The pressure, the constant aggression, the volume of punches that he brings will bring Terence a good fight and problems.
“I still think Crawford wins, but it won’t be an easy night. It’s going to be a tough fight. Yeah, I think it’ll go the distance. It’ll be a good fight,” said Mikey.
It’s a fight that Crawford could lose if he’s unable to score a knockout within nine rounds. We saw Crawford get dropped in his fight against Egidijus Kavaliauskas, and he had a lot of problems against Kell Brook in his last fight before getting lucky and stopping him early.
Who likes to get ?! Dork, sounds like you work for pbc