Terence Crawford says he feels that he & Errol Spence Jr have reached a point in their careers where they’re “bigger” than the titles at welterweight, and they could vacate their belts and it wouldn’t have an effect on interest in their mega-fight on July 29th on Showtime PPV.
Indeed, the titles are more important early on for fighters, but once they’re established a huge fan base and are viewed as being the best, the titles are meaningless.
IBF, WBA & WBC welterweight champion Spence (28-0, 22 KOs) and WBO champ Crawford (39-0, 30 KOs) have been around long enough to prove they’re the best at 147.
Crawford obviously still feels the titles are important because if he didn’t value them, he would have vacated his WBO strap a long time ago.
You can argue that Crawford’s popularity hasn’t increased to any great level in the last three years due to the level of opposition he’s been facing and, more importantly, because he’s been fighting just once a year.
In other divisions like 168, Canelo Alvarez holds all the belts and really doesn’t need the titles to attract interest in his fights, but he’s old school and feels they’re important.
“I feel like in boxing, when you get to a certain point in your career,
you become bigger than the belts,” said Terence Crawford to Brian Custer’s YouTube channel.
“I feel as if me and Earl Spence are at that level to where if we were both to vacate the belts right now, the fight would still be a huge mega-fight. Why? Because we are still the two best fighters in the division, and we make the belts, the belts don’t make us,” Crawford continued.
“Like I said, all those fights are out there in the welterweight division, but right now, my main focus is to beat and conquer Errol Spence,” said Crawford when asked if he’d be interested in staying at 147 after his fight with Spence to face the young phenom Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis, who many see as the guy that will take over after Spence & Crawford move up to 154.
“Well, listen. Those are great fights at 154 and at 147. so it’s good to know that we got options,” said Crawford when told that WBO interim junior middleweight champion Tim Tszyu wants to fight the winner of his July 29th contest against Spence.
“Definitely, hands down,” said Crawford when asked if the winner of his fight with Spence should be #1 pound-for-pound.
“Shakur,” said Terence on who wins between Gervonta Davis and Shakur Stevenson.
“No, I won’t be fighting at 40. So that’s something that we don’t even got to talk about,” said the soon-to-be 36-year-old Crawford.
