Following his massive win over Canelo Alvarez in September, Terence Crawford shocked the world by retiring from the sport of boxing. Don’t expect him to cross over into MMA, though.
In a recent stream with Adin Ross, Crawford shared some thoughts on the sport of mixed martial arts and the reasons why he’d never consider competing in it.
“Nah, nah, they don’t pay enough,” he said of a UFC fight.
“Man, you get messed up from wrestling,” he added. “Just in general. Wrestling, kicking, boxing, elbowing, right?”
Asked if he had any favorites, “Bud” named Jon Jones and Khabib Nurmagomedov, while continuing to insist he’d never seen Ilia Topuria compete.
“Listen, it’s crazy, I’ve never see this dude fight,” he said. “Never, not once. I’m gonna have to watch him on YouTube. I swear to God I’ve never seen him.”
That’s not all that surprising, considering Crawford’s picks of Khabib and Jones marks him as a 2015-2020 era fan, while Topuria did all his best work over the past three years.
Crawford also gave a shout out to Conor McGregor, who he says did better against Floyd Mayweather than many give him credit for.
“To me, he did real good against Floyd when he was boxing,” Terence said. “He did better than I thought he would do. He did better than Jake Paul did against Anthony Joshua. And he landed some good shots on Floyd. So I have to say he did pretty good. He did better than I thought he was gonna do.”
Crawford also explained why he walked away from the sport of boxing after such a large star-making performance against Canelo.
“I have nothing else to prove,” he said. “I have nothing else to accomplish. It’s like, what more can I do? They’re not gonna give me a credit anyway, so it really doesn’t even matter … Not to be cocky or anything. It’s just when you’re so much better than the competition and you make them look how they never looked before, everybody says, ‘Oh, they’re washed,’ or ‘This guy’s a bum.’ And you don’t get the appreciation that you rightfully deserve.”
That’s kind of funny, because when Ross mentioned that Ilia Topuria knocked out Max Holloway, Crawford wasn’t impressed.
“Max been doing this for a long time, though,” Crawford said.
