Dean Lonergan, promoter of WBO welterweight champion Jeff Horn (18-0-1, 12 KOs), has warned mandatory challenger Terence Crawford (32-0, 23 KOs) about the dangers of using horsehair gloves.
Over the last few weeks, there has been a lot of promotional controversy over Crawford potentially using a certain brand of Everlast gloves that are made with horse hair - and those gloves have a reputation of boosting the impact in a boxer's punches.
Horn will defend his title against Crawford on June 9th, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Lonergan is not in favor of either fighter using that particular brand of gloves - due to fear that one of the boxer's will get seriously injured.
But if someone is going to get hurt, Lonergan cautions that Crawford might be making the worst decision of his career.
“When Terence Crawford is nursing his broken eye socket, or possibly a broken jaw, because Jeff is the bigger, stronger fighter here, maybe he will think twice about wearing these gloves again,” Lonergan said to The Daily Telegraph.
“By choosing to wear these gloves you are only going to get one outcome for this fight, and that is that it will be more brutal than it needs to be.”
Former five division world champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. had refused to face anyone who used any brand of horsehair gloves. A few years ago, Mayweather nearly withdrew from a planned pay-per-view fight with Marcos Maidana - after learning that the Argentine puncher was using horsehair gloves. The two sides reached a monetary deal where Maidana wore a different brand.
Lonergan said: “If they haven’t done the comparison tests [between different brands of gloves], I tend to take the words of Floyd Mayweather, Jeff Fenech and Barry Michael, world champions who faced these gloves, who say they’re dangerous.
“And if the comparative testing hasn’t been done, I am struggling to understand why when it was recommended they should do it.”
