Terence Crawford’s defensive skills

His defense is one of the reasons I believe Erroll Spence beats him

 

This.

 

Please don't.

 

This

 

To not back down and take the fight to a big puncher.

 

He has good defense, not great. EK did an excellent job early on by not telegraphing his shots at all. That along with his slightly underrated speed caught Bud off guard. To land on Bud you cant telegraph your shots, need good timing & accuracy, or if you're an electric fast fighter you can get away with not being on point in those other areas. And it helps if you have good length as well. Gamboa, Benavidez, and EK all landed pretty well on Bud in spots, and they all exhibited a collection of those traits when they did.

-- pistal47's meta analysis of Bud Crawford getting popped on the melon.

 

Btw -- Crawford was WIDE OPEN like a 24/7 7/11 for the right hand during long stretches last night. If EK just had the courage to pull the trigger just once during those stretches we may well have a new WW champion. I mean Crawford was holding EK with his lead hand and pushing down on EK but had his power hand begind his chin and his chin dangling up and open waiting to get kissed. Psychological warfare that obviously works against EK but Spence would have left Crawford's corps headless.

 

His defensive skills are fine, his problem is that he wants to fight at times and completely tosses defense aside. You get hit more when you're offensive, no matter how good the defense.

 

Crawford probably makes the best adjustments currently in boxing as well. After getting touched up the first 3 rounds Bud started getting EK's timing down and was picking off his straight punches in the 2nd half with his own perfectly defensive placed gloves. After last night I think he certainly cemented himself as a top 5 p4p fighter in the world and top 3 for most people and best p4p for some.

 

Crawford was being outboxed. He was down 4-0 and was fortunate that a KD was not called. He wasn't doing it to please the fans like guys like Pacquiao, Lomachenko, and Inoue do. He didn't have a choice but to make it a fire fight and his conditioning pulled him through when EK's started to fail him.

 

Average defense at best. He is a tough as nails pressure fighter with the ability to figure out opponents and adjust. A solud chin but is hit way too easily.

I thought Spence was #1 WW, but not sure of his condition after the accident.

 

BS He got embarassed last night in front of Loma, being put on his hands and knees by a guy who drew with a B-level fighter last time out.

 

Guy, please calm down. Spence couldn't dispatch of Mikey. Couldn't even hurt him.

 

Me too. I think he wanted to prove that he could bang at 147 and get a big, strong welterweight out of there.