WBO welterweight champion Jeff Horn (18-0-1, 12 KOs) is not intimidated by his mandatory challenger, Terence Crawford (32-0, 23 KOs).
On Thursday, Crawford lashed out at Horn after the Australian boxer's camp had called him a "princess" over the hand injury that delayed their planned world title fight on April 14.
On Wednesday, their scheduled fight at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas was pushed back after it was revealed that Crawford suffering a minor hand injury that needs at least two weeks to heal.
Horn and his handlers questioned the severity of Crawford's injury and felt the Omaha fighter's toughness was highly overrated.
After hearing some of the verbal barbs being cast in his direction, including how Team Horn had labeled him as a 'princess' - it didn't take long before Crawford came firing back.
"I'm [going to] show you a little princess come fight night. You just keep training and keeping my belt warm, because I'm f***ing you up come fight night. You, me and everyone know it," Crawford blasted out on social media.
The new rematch date is unknown. Top Rank's CEO Bob Arum, who promotes Crawford, is looking at the date of May 19th or sometime in June.
According to Horn, the delay by Crawford has made him even more confident of victory because he's now convinced of who the tougher fighter is.
“It just means that Terence is not as tough as we thought,’’ Horn said to Courier Mail.
“I’m going to train extra hard now and on fight night I’ll expose that lack of toughness. I’m bigger and stronger than him and now I know I’m much tougher too.’’
And Horn's trainer, Glenn Rushton, is sticking to his guns that Crawford is a "princess."
“It’s a case of ‘harden up Princess’. Jeff needed eight stitches in a head wound before his last fight [against Gary Corcoran] and still went ahead with it," Rushton said.
“From what we’ve heard Crawford has suffered only a slight injury and it could easily be treated with a cortisone injection. Jeff has fought with much worse injuries than that.’’