Roy Jones Jnr, one of the sport’s great fighters, believes Terence Crawford has a great chance to defeat Canelo Alvarez when they meet next month.
Canelo-Crawford takes place for all of the marbles at 168lbs at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on September 13, and Jones, like Crawford and Canelo, is a multi-weight champion.
Nebraska star Crawford is moving up two weights, after just one fight at junior middleweight, where he decisioned Israil Madrimov, to take on reigning super middleweight king Canelo.
Crawford is higher up the mythical pound-for-pound rankings. Canelo is 35 and 63-2-2 (39 KOs), while Crawford is 41-0 (31 KOs) and will turn 38 a couple of weeks after the fight.
While Jones told BoxingScene he appreciated both boxers, he felt closer to Crawford.
“I like both fighters, but I'm more of a friend of Crawford because I’ve known Crawford for a long time, since his first fight on HBO, when I was commentating,” said Jones Jnr. “I think Bud has a great chance of winning the fight. I think Canelo also has a good chance of winning the fight. If I were a betting man, I’d probably lean more towards Bud’s side because of the hunger issue. But Canelo is a guy that’s been there for a long time, and he’s not going to be beat easily by nobody. So that’s going to be a tough task for anybody to attack. But if anybody can do it, I think it is Bud Crawford.”
Canelo won a tame majority decision over William Scull in May, and he’s gone the distance in his six fights since his points loss to Dmitry Bivol in 2022.
It has been said that perhaps power is the last thing a fighter loses, but there are plenty who say that is not the case with Canelo, as his power does not seem to be what it once was. It was thought he’d stop the likes of John Ryder and Edgar Berlanga, but they each made it to the final bell, Ryder with a broken nose and Berlanga having been dropped early in the contest.
Jones Jnr wonders if Canelo’s power was all that great to begin with.
“No, I don’t see the argument [about power being the last thing to go with Canelo] because if you think about it, who did Canelo really stop that had a chance? Did he stop Golovkin? No. Did he even drop Golovkin? No. He stopped the kid from Texas who was normally getting knocked out [James Kirkland via devastating KO]. He stopped Amir Khan who was up three weight classes or four weight classes and was prone to knock outs by a big puncher. But who has he really ever knocked out that was not prone to being knocked out? When have we ever seen him with a super punch like that? We haven’t. So it ain't like he lost it. He ain’t never had it. So that’s not true. His power to the body is still exceptional. It ain’t going nowhere. But he’s never been a super powerful headshot guy. If he was, he’d have took out more people than he took out because he fought some guys that he should have took out. For example, he should have took out Edgar Berlanga. He knocked him down. Look what the dude [Hamzah] Sheeraz did to him a couple weeks ago. Took him completely out. That’s a puncher. So he ain’t never been known as a puncher in my book. He was just a classic boxer, which he still is. You [can] call him a puncher because he can punch definitely to the body. But he’s never been a one punch headshot knockout guy unless the guy was vulnerable for being knocked out like that.”
Jones Jnr, at his career zenith, leapt up two weight classes having ruled at light heavyweight to take John Ruiz’s WBA heavyweight title. He did it by outboxing the larger man and using his speed and reflexes. But Jones Jnr sees Crawford being more physical with Canelo. True or false, does Jones Jnr expect the smaller man in this instance, Crawford, to try to adopt similar tactics against Canelo?
“I ain’t saying that, but false,” said Jones Jnr.
Canelo-Crawford is the biggest boxing event of the year and will be screened on Netflix.
