TERRENCE “BUD” CRAWFORD, unbeaten in 30 fights, winning 21 of them by the short route, says he is “not chasing him,” him being the Filipino global boxing great Manny Pacquiao.
Crawford has his eye not on history—but on claiming the epithet “great.”
His unbeaten record, even if he could stretch it to 49 and —the magic number of Rocky Marciano’s legendary ring—would still fall short of being acknowledged as great without him showing off Pacquiao’s scalp.
By this, I mean Crawford would fall by comparison to the ring great. As of now, his record pales like a crescent moon fading in the western sky when light starts to break in the east.
“Yeah, I’d like to fight him,” Crawford said, after stopping John Molina in the eight round of their December 11 fight in Ohama, Nebraska, backed by a hometown crowd of 11,270.
He has been dominant during the year—but an adjective not validated by a stoppage or decision over a big-name boxer. Last summer he outpointed WBC welterweight champion Viktor Postol in Las Vegas, a fight he had set up by knocking out Hand Lundy in New York.
Now, having battered his third victim for the year with ease, Crawford is poised to be named Fighter of the Year for a second time in three years.
Still, Crawford, for all his talent and his budding bid for ring immortality, still seems so much the curtain-raiser to the main bout. I believe he knows this, and it hit him on the night he stopped Molina.
“I think I should get a lot of credit for what I did this year, especially tonight,” Crawford said. “I showed I could be a finisher.”
Could be. But a year in a ring career would not be enough to endow him with this honor.
When the big stars in sports—from boxing to basketball to football—and entertainment descend on the bright lights and sultry air of Las Vegas to watch a fight, it is to watch Pacquiao perform that virtuoso dance-and-punch routine that has felled many famous opponents and thrilled a global audience for close to a decade.
The dazzling footwork was a dance, the hand speed unmatched in his crime as he transformed the savage fight into a ballet of violence. As if on a spontaneous cue,the crowd always responded with a hilarious “Pac-quiao, Pac-quiao, Pac-quiao” roar.
Crawford must realize that the other side of the coin is this. The ring is not about winning it all, as the great Ali and Marciano before him already inscribed in stone.
It is about going through the toughest bouts of adversity or suffering the most grievous hurts and wounds, and surviving them as the only man standing in the ring. It is about falling hard with a thud, and then rising again, but rising higher than ever.
Greatness touches a boxer when his opponent, in the depths of his suffering, proclaims so. Or his admirers show the gesture that bestows such royalty.
The writer Mark Kram wrote about Ali in Ghosts of Manila, his searing reexamination of the Ali legend. “In a sudden gesture of respect in Las Vegas, Elvis Presley had taken the robe off his back and given it to Ali, saying, “From one king to the king.”
No boxer ever proclaimed himself great except Ali in his boisterous way as he conquered the fiercest and meanest of heavyweight champions in the early sixties, Sonny Liston.
No offense meant or disrespect to Crawford, but at 29 he is still laboring to win the respect and adulation that Pacquiao at a comparable age had already begun to enjoy in abundance.
Pacquiao, even late in his career, is still king. Even as age has slowed him down, he is the ring standard against whom all others, before they could be certified as great, would have to be measured.
On a bad day, in one of those rare moments of a slipup, Pacquiao let off his guard and his opponent, Juan Manuel Marquez, caught the champion’s mouth with a vicious right hand with one second left in the sixth round of their fourth fight. It was a “perfect punch.” Pacquiao’s head snapped back violently. I tempted my friends with the observation then that “Atlas was shrugged.” He dropped face first to the canvass.
“He is not getting up, Jim!” HBO ring commentator Roy Jones screamed three times.
Despite the knockout loss, Pacquiao commanded respect, still instilled fear in his opponents and remained a pay-per-view richest draw worldwide.
These are some of the formidable heights that Crawford must understand he has to scale. By eyeing a fight with Pacquiao, a slugfest the 29-year-old would be likely tipped to win, he could make a bid for eternity.
Pacquiao has rarely made known how he feels about such a fight. One thing he desperately wants, though, is Floyd Mayweather. The return bout would be the stage for the Pacman to reaffirm his greatness.
Manny seems unlikely to rest until he could set the record right again.