Nine years is a long time near the top of the sport.

Nine years is consistency.

Nine years is a long time to wait to make the statement that your greatness is undeniable.

Saturday night, 35-year old WBO welterweight titlist Terence Crawford (39-0, 30 KO) will face 33-year old IBF/WBA/WBC welterweight titlist Errol Spence (28-0, 22 KO) in the biggest welterweight fight since Mayweather-Pacquiao. Like that 2015 megafight, Spence-Crawford is a bout years in the making, full of promise and anticipation and no certain answers.

For Crawford, it’s a chance at something his career has lacked to date: a defining moment. It will be Crawford’s 18th major title fight. 

The first came a little more than nine years ago when Crawford traveled to Glasgow in March 2014 to unseat WBO lightweight titlist Ricky Burns by unanimous decision. One month later, another fighter won their first title as well. 

That fighter had something to say on Tuesday.

One of the unnoticed elements of this particularly special week for fight fans in what has been a particularly special year is how closely the careers of Crawford and Japan’s Naoya Inoue have paralleled. That they would both arrive at the biggest fights of their careers in the same week is almost fitting when we think about where their championship stories began.

Crawford followed the win over Burns with a ninth-round stoppage of Yuriorkis Gamboa and then laid claim to the lineal and Ring Magazine lightweight titles with a victory over then-highly rated Rey Beltran. It was the year that Crawford broke from the pack, and he was honored by the Boxing Writers Association of America as the Fighter of the Year.

A contingent of hardcore fans and press had another fighter in mind. BoxingScene and several other prominent websites favored the work of Inoue 

In April 2014, in just his sixth professional start, Inoue stopped TBRB’s number-one rated junior flyweight, Adrian Hernandez, for the WBC title in the sixth round. Inoue defended the belt once with an eleventh-round stoppage of Wittawas Basapean before jumping two weight classes for his final start of the year.

Omar Narvaez was rated number one by TBRB and The Ring Magazine at junior bantamweight on New Year’s Eve 2014. With a record of 43-1-2, the two-time Argentine Olympian’s lone defeat had come via decision to bantamweight titlist Nonito Donaire. Inoue blew him out in two rounds for the WBO belt. It would be the only stoppage loss in Narvaez’s 55-fight career. Like Crawford, in 2014 Inoue 2014 to break from the pack.

The pack hasn’t caught either of them yet. Some have argued that part of that is because of the parts of the pack they missed. 

Inoue’s leap from junior flyweight to junior bantamweight meant going around a flyweight division headed at the time by Roman Gonzalez and Juan Francisco Estrada. It made sense at the time; Inoue at 21 years old and 8-0 wasn’t deemed ready for a pair of prime beasts who are both now locks to head to Canastota. Later hopes to see some of those names at junior bantamweight ran into bad timing, mandatories, and a body that pushed Inoue to bantamweight. 

For Crawford, his rise to welterweight has been a study of wondering when we get to the good stuff. The business of boxing meant his affiliation with Top Rank and the affiliation of almost the entirety of the rest of the welterweight division with the Premiere Boxing Champions was an obstacle. Crawford got Shawn Porter; Spence got to him first along with a fresher Kell Brook, Yordenis Ugas, Danny Garcia, and three belts headed into the weekend. 

Inoue and Crawford have both dealt with skeptics as their unbeaten runs continued, in part because some of the public wanted more meat in their resumes. Inoue handled his business already this week with an eighth-round knockout of unified titlist Stephen Fulton, a toppling of the consensus number one junior featherweight in the world. It was the defining win of Inoue’s career, a proof of concept for any remaining doubters.

Crawford now has Spence in front of him with a chance to garner the same.

The parallels run closer when we dig into the numbers and show there’s been a lot more meat on the bone than some have given credit for:

  • Inoue is now 18-0, 16 KO in title fights; Crawford is 17-0, 14 KO.
  • Crawford has won titles in three weight classes spanning 12 pounds; Inoue has won them in four spanning 14.  
  • Inoue is 12-0, 10 KO against fighters ranked in the top ten of their class by TBRB and/or Ring Magazine; Crawford is 13-0, 10 KO against the same.
  • Of Inoue’s 12 ranked wins, 9 were ranked top five and 7 top 3 by one or both bodies; Of Crawford’s 13 wins, 7 were ranked top five and 5 of those ranked top 3 by one or both bodies.
  • At some point, Inoue has defeated the TBRB and/or Ring number one ranked, or next highest ranked fighter after him, in all four divisions he’s competed him; Crawford has done it at both lightweight and junior welterweight (twice) with a chance to do it in his third division this weekend.
  • Crawford became the first undisputed champion at junior welterweight since Kostya Tszyu was stripped of the WBC and WBA belts in 2004; Inoue became the first undisputed champion at bantamweight since Enrique Pinder was stripped by the WBC in 1973.

With a win Saturday, Crawford would be the first fighter since the birth of the WBO in the late 1980s to unify all four major alphabet titles in two weight classes; Inoue is widely expected to get the chance to do the same before the year is out against unified titlist Marlon Tapales. 

We’ll know by Sunday whether that last one is an honor Inoue can beat Crawford to the finish line on. We’ll also know by Sunday if, nine years after winning their first titles, Inoue and Crawford stand alone as the centerpiece of the always entertaining debate about the best fighter in the world, pound-for-pound. Two parallel careers have converged just days apart. 

Is this the moment where they diverge?       

Cliff Rold is the Managing Editor of BoxingScene, a founding member of the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board, a member of the International Boxing Research Organization, and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America.  He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com