By: Ken Hissner
The latest is that Terrence “Bud” Crawford, 32-0 (23) who defended his WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO super lightweight titles in August knocking out Julius Indongo, 22-0, in Lincoln, NEB, in his 6th defense and as the WBO lightweight champion had two defenses will be moving up to welterweight.
The WBO is placing him as their No. 1 contender ahead of former champion Manny Pacquiao who lost a bad decision to WBO champion Jeff Horn in July. “He will relinquish his title and he wants the WBO to classify him at No. 1 at welterweight,” said President Valcarcel. This was voted on and passed.
Horn will be allowed to make a December 13th defense against the No. 10 contender Gary “Hellraiser” Corcoran, 23-1, of the UK, which radically shakes up the welterweight division and appears to shut out former champion Pacquiao of a Horn rematch. The December title fight winner will have 90 days to defend against Crawford.
As the WBO lightweight champion Crawford won the title from Ricky Burns in Glasgow in March of 2014. In June of that year he defeated Yuri Gamboa, 23-0 in June and Ray Beltran 29-6-1 in November. He then moved up to super lightweight winning the vacant WBO World title over Thomas Dulorme 22-1 in April of 2015. In October he defeated Dierry Jean 29-1, in February of 2016 Hank Lundy, in July defeated WBC champion Viktor Postol 28-0, in December John Molina Jr, 29-6, in May of 2017 Felix Diaz 19-1 and in August Indongo.
What will be interesting is that the other welterweight champions are Keith “One Time” Thurman, 28-0, the WBA & WBC champion, and Errol “The Truth” Spence Jr., 22-0, the IBF champion. There has been talk of the two of them unifying their titles.
While Crawford is moving up so is Mikey Garcia, 37-0 (30), the new WBC lightweight champion who defeated Dejan Zlaticanin, 22-0, for that title in Las Vegas in January. In July he won a non-title fight over the former WBA super lightweight champion Adrien Broner, 33-2, in Brooklyn who is now No. 8 in the WBC super lightweight rankings for Crawford’s title.
Garcia won the WBO World featherweight title in January of 2013 over Orlando Salido, 40-11-2, and in June made a defense over Juan Manuel Lopez, 33-2. He then moved up to take the WBO World super featherweight title in November defeating Roman Martinez, 27-1-2, and in January of 2014 over Juan Carlos Burgos, 30-1-2. He then took off over two years coming back in July of 2016 in order to get out of a managerial contract defeating Elio Rojas, 24-2, before winning the WBC lightweight title. His camp has talked about moving up to super lightweight and with Crawford vacating it wouldn’t take much for Garcia to fight for a title at that weight class.
The only dual champions at this time are Gennady “GGG” Golovkin who holds three of the middleweight titles, Thurman two of the welterweight titles, “A.J.” Anthony Joshua two of the heavyweight titles and Ryan Burnett two of the bantamweight titles.