Crawford’s Performance: More Than Just High Expectations

Trainer Brian ‘BoMac’ McIntyre says that Terence Crawford didn’t receive more praise from fans for his victory over WBA junior middleweight champion Israil Madrimov on August 3rd because they were comparing his performance to how he’d looked against Errol Spence last year.

BoMac says the boxing public expected Bud Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs) to “annihilate” the previously unbeaten Madrimov (10-1-1, 7 KOs) in their headliner at the BMO Stadium in Los Angeles. When he failed to do that, they collectively downgraded him.

Factors Influencing Crawford’s Performance

Many felt that the 36-year-old Crawford showed signs of age, looking slower and weaker at 154 and getting hit more than they’d ever seen during his 16-year professional career. The fans weren’t imagining things about Crawford getting hit, and his power was not what it had been in the past at 147, 140, and 135.

– Age
– Inactivity
– Moving up in weight
– Weak resume

BoMac’s Denial: Protecting his Star

BoMac doesn’t want to admit that Bud Crawford is showing age and has little time left because he’s the biggest star in his stable. Once Crawford is gone, there isn’t anyone to replace him. There isn’t a money guy to replace Crawford when he retires, so BoMac is going to deny the reality of what’s happening. He’s at the very end of his career, and that’s just the way it is.

Crawford has been fighting just once a year since 2020, and when you’re that inactive, it’s impossible to stay sharp. He’s gotten away with it due to the beatable opposition that he’s fought, but it caught up to him against Madrimov.

Age, inactivity, weak opposition and moving up in weight resulted in Crawford looking beatable against Madrimov. He would have lost the fight if Madrimov had shown more willingness to fight with a purpose instead of focusing on pot shots.

“I kept telling him to take the right hand away from him. From my assessment, once Bud realized he couldn’t hurt him, he just stayed on the line a little bit too long instead of moving to his right,” said trainer Brian ‘BoMac’ McIntyre to the Luke Thomas forum, explaining why Terence Crawford kept getting hit with right hands from Israil Madrimov during their fight on August 3rd.

“One thing he [Madrimov] didn’t do with the movement was work off of it. If I was in his corner, I would have told him to work off of it. That feint he was doing, that herky-jerky movement, I would have worked off of it, but he didn’t do it. That’s why the jab [from Crawford] was so effective.

“He felt great about it,” said BoMac when asked how Crawford felt about his performance against Madrimov. “He tried to get Madrimov to come in a little bit more, but Madrimov, after he felt that power, he wouldn’t come in no more.”

It sounds like BoMac is projecting. It was Crawford who stopped fighting aggressively once he felt Madrimov’s power, not the other way around. Madrimov was the one landing the harder shots, whereas Crawford was throwing jabs.

“You notice that when Bud hurt him, the first thing he would do was grab and hold or try and push Bud around a little bit. I thought that was smart of him.

A Legacy of Dominance 

“Of course, it did,” said BoMac about whether Crawford was unfairly judged for his performance due to how he’d looked a year earlier when he fought Errol Spence. Fans expected a similar showing by Crawford, and when he failed to do that, they felt he didn’t look good.

The fans who aren’t knowledgeable about boxing expected Crawford to destroy Madrimov as he’d done with his 11 previous opponents, but the hardcore fans who know about the sport recognized that he’d fought weak opposition. There was no way that Crawford could fight that way against Madrimov because he actually had talent. He would have beaten everyone that Crawford had fought before.

“If you look at the last 11 Bud opponents, he just annihilated them. So, people had in their minds, ‘Bud is going to annihilate this guy. But the guy was tough, hung in there, and at some of the punches,” said BoMac.

The last 11 fighters Crawford “annihilated” were nothing special. He beat a bunch of weak fighters, and that’s why he looked flawed against Madrimov. He didn’t beat anyone good during his previous 11 fights.

Crawford’s last 11 opponents:

Errol Spence
David Avanesyan
Shawn Porter
Kell Brook
Egidijus Kavaliauskas
Amir Khan
Jose Benavidez Jr.
Jeff Horn
Julius Indongo
Felix Diaz
John Molina