Why Terence Crawford’s Win Over Canelo Alvarez Changes the Boxing GOAT Conversation

After another masterful performance, this time on the sport’s biggest stage in a decade, the still unbeaten Terence “Bud” Crawford is no longer one of the most under-appreciated athletes in history. He’s simply one of the best.

Crawford moved up two weight classes from where he last fought and three weight classes from where he began his career to pull off the fight with Canelo, a dream bout that had long been considered unrealistic by even the most vivid dreamers. He entered as a consensus underdog, but controlled the fight from start to finish and left his opponent reeling for an opening all night.

At 37 years old with a first-ballot Hall of Fame legacy already intact, Crawford very easily could have let this opportunity pass by and most sensible people wouldn’t have blamed him for it. Moving up two weight classes is a nearly impossible task for any fighter. Moving up two weight classes to face Canelo, another generation-defining great, is borderline lunacy.

But what’s the common thread that makes all of our beloved athletic icons, our “GOATs”, what they are? It’s that lunacy. It’s the belief that even with history, circumstances and all evidence against them, they can achieve what they set out to do. Crawford told the press this week he was 1000% sure he would beat Canelo, and that belief translated into his performance.

“When I set my sights on doing something and I know what I’m capable of, it’s not like a surprise to me,” Crawford said. “It’s a surprise to y’all because y’all didn’t believe me … but for me, I knew I could do it, I just needed the opportunity.”

Make no mistake, Crawford’s resume stacked up with some of the all-time greats before Saturday’s performance. But the reality is, he had more to lose than Canelo. Canelo now has three losses in his career and a few more fights that could have gone a different direction on the cards if he had a different name.

While we’ve seen Bud have some nights that didn’t live up to his standard, we’ve never seen him fail to come out on top. By becoming the first fighter in 87 years to win an undisputed world championship in three different weight classes on top of that already pristine 42-0-0 record, Crawford has established himself as a generation-defining athlete in this chapter of American sports history.

When people consider the greatest athletes of the 2010s and 2020s, Crawford belongs on all of the most exclusive lists. The only comparable boxing talents of the last two generations are Floyd Mayweather, Oleksandr Usyk and Naoya Inoue, who are the consensus top three pound-for-pound fighters on the planet.

And if you ask Canelo, who has faced both Crawford and Mayweather, who the better fighter is? Well, his answer may surprise you.

“I think Crawford is way better than Floyd Mayweather,” Canelo admitted in the post-fight press conference.

It was clear from the jump that Crawford had all of the physical advantages. He retained the speed and endurance that many were worried he would sacrifice by moving up, and his signature power was as potent as always. Canelo has a historically strong chin, but a handful of Crawford’s blows would have sent a more delicate fighter to the canvas.

It felt fitting that on the sport’s biggest stage in a decade, and arguably ever, the most underappreciated talent in the modern era got his first real chance to show mainstream American sports fans how great he truly is. Many everyday Americans were unfamiliar with Bud Crawford’s name before this fight, but Max Kellerman described it best after the fight.

"Every era has their guy that you can't tell anyone from that era anything about,” Kellerman said. “We lived through Michael Jordan. Try telling anyone who did that, that LeBron James is better. Those that lived through LeBron James there will be another guy come around in 20 years and try and tell them that … Bud Crawford is that, to this era of boxing."