Terence Crawford vs. Félix Díaz & Raymundo Beltrán vs. Jonathan Maicelo RBR

Ward vs. Kovalev is two guys in the p4p top 5-10 range who are the same size and same skill level in their primes, competing to determine supremacy in a stacked and historically important division.

Golovkin is a top 5 p4p guy and the undisputed man in a currently so-so but admittedly historically important division, taking on a farcical belt holder that is ranked highly on p4p lists but may or may not deserve such a high ranking on h2h ability, who is really a 154lber and beat a welterweight for the MW title (after said welterweight caught the last real MW champ at the end of his run, old broken and injured) and then defended once, against the even smaller Khan.


GGG vs. Canelo isn't bigger for middleweight than Ward vs. Kovalev is for LHW - nor bigger for the sport.

Either of two outcomes will pan out: Golovkin destroys Canelo as he ought to or he ages overnight and loses. The latter means a great talent's day in the sun is done while Canelo gets to prolong the smoke & mirrors act at 160lb instead of showing his mettle against his peers in their prime at his natural 154. The former means Golovkin has added just another notch for which he won't get credit from the haters. A competitive fight would be a shocking development.

 

Kellerman last night IMO fell short in his appraisal of Crawford, saying we "might" be seeing a great fighter in his prime. I think we can drop the "might". Crawford has now toyed with two Olympic gold medalists and made a string of fair to excellent opposition (dating back to Prescott) all look cut from the same mediocre cloth. This is a special fighter.

 

Díaz was a beast in the amateurs who thus far had looked very good in the pros (only losing a close one to a vastly more experiencd Peterson, no shame) - reasonable that people thought he would be a good test or at least provide some adversity for Crawford. The fact that he did get schooled instead ought to mean heaps of plaudits for Crawford but instead people will just throw Díaz under the bus. "Guess he wasn't that good". Lol. With his two gold medals and experts projecting him to be a multiple division champ in the pros a fairly short time ago. Ok.

 

See, that right there shows you are rating guys in the wrong order for misguided reasons. Postol counts why, because he upset Matthysse? The fact that he caught and made the most of a stylistically favorable matchup with someone that had mostly campaigned at lighter weights and very arguably had their constitution and durability compromised by that career-shortening DSG war doesn't mean his pedigree is all of a sudden the equal of Díaz or Gamboa. These are guys that dominated stacked fields of international opposition in the amateurs for years and then followed up with success in the pros looking ****-hot and blowing away solid B level opponents with pundits and commentators literally drooling over them until their first defeats (which in neither case were any great disservice to either man's reputation coming against Peterson and Crawford himself) made everyone hightail off the bandwagons like the fair weather fans 95% of boxing heads are. You're defeating your own argument here, Akbar. You say on the one hand that just a single victory over a p4p guy is ho-hum and Crawford "has Pistol and that's it", but guess what?- Postol has Matthysse and THAT'S IT. That victory is no less tainted on account of Matthysse's scar tissue on the eye socket and having a style traditionally lending itself to a bright-yet-short-burning fuse of a prime than say, Crawford's victory over the unbeaten and highly regarded (projected by many for a long time as potentially a p4p king) Gamboa is by Yuriorkis being the smaller man coming up and having some management issues outside the ring. Not to mention, Lucas himself was naturally smaller than Viktor (with the frame of a full-fledged welter) just as much as Yuriorkis was naturally smaller than Crawford...and Gamboa was more talented at his worst than Postol ever was at his best. You can't have it both ways.

Matthysse is a bigger individual scalp (on paper) than Gamboa or Díaz have but their resumes overall are much better than Postol's. And they're both just greater fighters, period, that much ought to be obvious. He's physically larger but they're both far more skilled and blessed athletically.

1) Díaz
2) Gamboa
3) Postol

Solid best three and behind that you have Dulorme, Beltran, Jean, Burns, Molina, Klimov and Lundy all made to look bush-league when all of them are fringe world class at the very worst.

Resume is about who you beat as well as HOW you beat them. Crawford has three elites under his belt plus a very deep roster of secondary and tertiary victims in the world class spectrum, all made to look equally bad. That bespeaks his greatness.

 

Interesting predicament, as Pac is stylistically lower risk and guarantees Crawford's acceleration into superstardom while Spence will give him the real credibility among those in the know as the best h2h welter and would put to bed all complaints of Bud cherry-picking (or at least not taking on stiff challenges with no asterisks).

 

Spitting truuuuuuuuuth.

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