By: Sean Crose
“I’m like five-eleven, six feet,” Dominique Crowder tells me. That’s tall for a bantamweight, very tall. Yet it works well for the 7-0 Baltimore native. A protégé of Mark Breland and Jose Guzman of the famed Boca boxing gym, the 27 year old Crowder is looking to impress again this weekend when he faces the 8-0 Marlin Sims at the Crown Reef Resort in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina Saturday night. The contest is set for six rounds, but with Crowder having won 6 of his 7 fights by knockout, no one would be surprised if the bout ends early on Saturday.
“He’s going to put him in a body bag,” Guzman says of his fighter. Guzman also makes it clear that Crowder reminds him of a prime Mark Breland. It’s easy to see the similarities between the two men. Both are tall, skilled and can turn out the lights at a moment’s notice. Even Crowder himself admits that his style is similar to Breland’s. “I think it’s a natural thing,” Crowder tells me. He admires Breland, though, a lot. And not just because the former champion co-trains him, along with Guzman. Crowder considers Breland to be a huge inspiration. This is clearly a team that gels.
Things have been going so well for team Crowder that the young fighter feels big things are in the future. He found a way to fight a whopping four times during Covid plagued 2020, and has no intention of slowing down. “I say two years or less,” Crowder tells me when I ask how long until a major fight (for, say, a major title) is on the horizon, “I’ll be ready to make that jump.” For some fighters, statements like these are par for the self promotion course. Crowder, however, appears to be quite confident in his abilities. “I can take the risk,” he says, “because I’m a good fighter.”
The evidence suggests that he certainly is. Not only does Crowder tend to tower over the opposition, he is self aware in the ring. Even more importantly, Crowder actually flows as he tosses off shots in combinations…a rare thing in a young prospect on the rise. And then there’s that power of his. He may not have faced high competition as of yet, but an 85 percent knockout ratio speaks for itself. Not that a knockout is something Crowder relies on. “It just comes,” he says.