Crawford doesn't think Pacquiao was legit

I'm surprised Bud didn't bring up the head size argument or how he went up through weight divisions like crazy. Those are the most common "Manny was on PEDs" arguments. The reason Manny refused blood testing during the Floyd fight was because him and his team were frustrated at being jerked around by Floyd during negotiations where they kept having new tests, contracts, and clauses added onto the fight. That's why Manny was reticent to do the blood testing, because he didn't like how he was being forced into doing it at late notice, iirc. He also did score a knockout after the Floyd fight, against Matthysse. And the reason his power started to fade was because he was a tiny welter fighting guys way bigger than him and way younger than him. He relied largely on his explosiveness, weird angles, and non-stop pace to stop guys by catching them off guard and forcing them to tire.

Crawford is frustrated that he never got the chance to fight Pacquiao, so feels the need to diminish him and his accomplishments imo. It's entirely possible and even quite likely that Manny did do PEDs, like most guys at the top level do. You don't look as good as Manny does at 46 against Barrios without a bit of chemical assistance. Crawford resents the opportunities he was never given to build his legacy and I think that's understandable but it also doesn't give him a right to tarnish the legacy of his contemporary greats.

 

Power is different with every fighter and it also depends on the opponents they're facing. Pac has been fighting mostly guys bigger than him for most of his career especially when he made his jump up to 147. Remember that Pac won his first world title at Flyweight so of course his power is not going to be the same in every weight class he's in. The stoppages he produced against ODLH and Cotto were mainly overwhelming offense rather than brute power. Hatton was a perfect shot but that also means he 's far more explosive below 147. Following the Cotto win his knockout streak stopped for a number of reason: fighters who refused to engage (Clottey, Mosley, Broner), fighters who were way too tough to dent (Bradley, Rios, Vargas), and of course fighters who were very competitive that made the fights very close (JMM, Thurman). Matthysse was an exception because he had the perfect style to make Pac look good. Margarito was also someone that had the right style but he had a significant size advantage over Pac but even then you could argue that fight should have been stopped but for whatever reason the referee let it go on. Same with the Algieri fight where Pac knocked him down multiple times but it still went on unnecessarily. You're not going to expect a fighter who started out at 108 pounds to have the same consistent power against bigger opponents.

 

The fact Pac was still scoring knockdowns even against some of the "too tough to dent" guys like Bradley or skilled competitive opponents like Thurman means that it wasn't simply that the guys he fought were too big or that his power simply disappeared overnight. You can either say he just mysteriously lost a lot of power, or that he just wasn't a very good finisher. Considering Pac had some fairly brutal finishes/knockouts in the past, I don't think the latter suggestion holds a lot of weight unless we're talking about cagey guys who just wanted to survive like Clottey.

 

Hatton isn't in the same galaxy as Crawford in terms of ring ability, no offense to the late champ. Beating Hatton doesn't give me confidence Pac would beat Crawford.

 

Pac's finishing ability has never been the best if we're being quite honest. Even with fights like Cotto, Diaz, and Barrera he wasn't able to stop them earlier when he had the chance but it lasted until the later rounds. He was never a fighter who was able to finish the fight right away when he had an opponent in trouble. Most of the knockdowns that he scored at 147 against Cotto, Mosley, Bradley, Vargas, JMM, Algieri, Thurman were fast sneaky shots that they didn't see coming but most of the time these knockdowns were nothing too damaging.

Again power is something that depends on the fighter themselves, their opponents, styles and size difference. Pac's power above 140 was always around the 6 range but it was all dependent on his speed, angles, and overwhelming offense. I'm not sure why Crawford has an issue with Pac not scoring as much KOs after making his jump to 147 against bigger opponents. Nobody seemed to have a problem with Floyd Mayweather or Bernard Hopkins not scoring a lot of knockouts. Even Robert Duran's KO ratio dropped dramatically as he went up.