Former two division world champion Terence Crawford (32-0, 23 KOs) is in no way underestimating the skill level of his upcoming opponent, WBO welterweight champion Jeff Horn (18-0-1, 12 KOs).
The fight is nearly complete for April 14th, at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Horn is coming off a major 2017. He won an upset twelve round unanimous decision over Manny Pacquiao in July to capture the WBO title at the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, Australia. A crowd of over 51,000 came out to watch him fight - and the victory made him an instant superstar in the country.
There was a lot of controversy after the fight.
Pacquiao and his team were screaming robbery and demanded an investigation from the WBO.
The World Boxing Organization approved their request for a review. They had an internal investigation and upheld the scoring of the fight.
Crawford also had no issue with the scoring. He felt the contest was very close and could have went either way.
In Crawford's opinion of the action, Horn was doing a lot of damage in the fight and Pacquiao's power shots, which usually sent his opponents down or created a significant dent, were not as effective on the much larger Horn.
"It was a close fight, [Horn] could have arguable won the fight. Because when I look at the fight, from the first couple of rounds and some of last rounds of the fight - he was roughing Pacquiao up, he was pushing Pacquiao around, he was making Pacquiao miss, he was landing little punches that maybe weren't hurting Pacquiao - but they may not have been scored [with the people watching]," Crawford told Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports.
"Pacquiao was also landing a lot of shots that weren't as telling because Jeff is so big that he wasn't moving him as much like he would normally do if he landed those shots on a smaller welterweight. I look it as he got the victory and that's that. It could have went either way."
