Tonight’s WBO Welterweight Title at Madison Square Garden will be ESPN’s first Top Rank Boxing and Terence Crawford will be defending his title against Amir Khan.
Undefeated Crawford (34-0, 25 KOs) is highly favored against Khan (33-4, 20 KOs) despite the fact that this is Crawford’s first real challenge. Khan’s experience, size and speed is something Crawford hasn’t dealt with in the ring yet. With his 34 wins, there’s really no big names under his belt. For Crawford, Khan is the first big name boxer he’s going up against.
“Amir Khan has been in there with a lot of great fighters,” Crawford said, “Me beating him will put me on another level in the welterweight division.”
One thing that Crawford can take advantage of in tonight’s fight is Khan’s glass chin. When Khan gets hit hard, he abandons his game plan, throws out his boxing skills and becomes sloppy. If he catches Khan, frustration will sink in and Khan will be all over the place. Crawford may not be Canelo Alvarez but the southpaw is tough.
Like other fights, Crawford likes to figure out his opponent the first couple of rounds and then attack. This is not what Crawford wants with Khan’s speed and skills. Khan could steal those rounds and run forcing Crawford to chase him which will tire him out. However, with Khan’s pride, I don’t see him running much.
“For those people, and even Crawford if he’s thinking this way, that are thinking it’s going to be an easy fight for him because they’re taking me from the last fight against Vargas, I think I’m going to shock the world, definitely. If they’re thinking I’m going to be the same fighter as that fight, they’ll be in for a big shock,” Khan said.
I respect Khan’s pride but I believe it will hurt him in this fight as it has in the fights he lost except to Lamont Peterson where it ended on a controversial decision.
A win for either one of these boxers could open doors to bigger fights like Errol Spence Jr. who said on his Instagram live last week that he would “beat that boy’s a**” referring to Crawford.
Let’s see if the winner of this fight will be Spence Jr.’s next opponent.