By: William Holmes
HBO will return to the hometown of WBO Junior Welterweight Champion Terence Crawford in Omaha Nebraska when he defends his title against Haitian born Canadian Dierry Jean.
HBO will be televising the flyweight shellacking of Brian Viloria by Roman Gonzalez as well as the eight round domination of David Lemieux by middleweight kingpin Gennady Golovkin from the pay per view last week before the start of tonight’s bout.
Reports indicated that the pay per view only did 150,000 buys, so HBO will want as many eyes as possible on Golovkin and Gonzalez since they are their top two stars.
Prized prospects and future contenders Miakel Zewski, Andy Ruiz Jr., Julian Rodriguez, and Evgeny Gradovich will be fighting on the undercard, and it’s likely at least one of the previously mentioned fighters will have their highlights shown.
The following is a preview of the main event of the night.
Terence Crawford (26-0) vs. Dierry Jean (29-1); WBO Junior Welterweight Title
Official Weights from Omaha:
Terence Crawford: 140 lbs.
Dierry Jean: 140 lbs.
An impressive win for Crawford could lead to a fight against Manny Pacquiao in the spring of 2016, and he has the type of opponent that he could look good against.
Crawford is five years younger than Jean and will have about an inch and a half height advantage. Jean will have the two inch reach advantage.
At first glance it would appear that Jean has the power edge. He has twenty knockouts and while Crawford has eighteen, but Jean has stopped three of his past four fights by knockout. Crawford has only stopped two of his past five opponents.
Crawford and Jean both experienced some success in the amateur ranks. Crawford was a Gold Medal National Police Athletic League winner. Jean won the Canadian National Championship before turning professional.
Crawford, by far, has the better resume as a professional.
Crawford dominated the lightweight division before jumping up to the junior welterweight division with wins of Ricky Burns on Burns’ home turf, Yuriorkis Gamboa, Andrey Klimov, Breidis Prescott, Raymundo Beltran, and Thomas Dulorme.
Crawford was also the 2014 BWAA Fighter of the Year.
Jean has only fought outside of Canada three times and his lone loss, a losing effort to Lamont Peterson, occurred in the United States.
Jean doesn’t have any major names on his resume, but some of his most notable victories include Jerry Belmontes, Carlos Manuel Reyes, and Juan Jesus Rivera.
Crawford has too much to lose with a lackluster performance and will likely be looking to put on a show for his promoter, Bub Arum, as well as the pro-Crawford crowd in attendance.
Crawford should be able to overwhelm Jean and force the referee to stop it in the mid to late rounds.
