Terence Crawford Wins a Third Belt and Other Post-Fight Notes

Terence Crawford Wins – Speed kills. It’s an expression often mouthed by college football recruiters. It’s applicable to boxing too as Terence Crawford demonstrated on Saturday, July 23, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. He was simply too fast for his Ukrainian adversary, Victor Postol, who stalked him but couldn’t catch him; Crawford was too elusive.

Call it a cat-and-mouse game or a chess match, but whatever it was it wasn’t a fight for the ages. Postol had a few good moments – notably in the final round when he was in a desperation mode – but overall his effort was disappointing because he was reluctant to exchange with Crawford. He had his finger on the trigger all the while, but waited for his quarry to become a stationary target and Crawford was too smart for that.

Postol brushed the canvas twice in the fifth frame, legitimate knockdowns although he wasn’t hurt, and had a point deducted in Round 11 for hitting Crawford behind the head. The final scores were 117-108 and 118-107 twice.

Crawford now holds the WBO and WBC 140-pound belts. At the post-fight press conference he was awarded a third belt, The Ring magazine belt which by rule is only on the line when a fight pits the  #1 man against the man rated #2 in The Ring rankings. The belt was presented to him by the magazine’s editor Michael Rosenthal.

Here are some more post-fight notes harvested by TSS correspondent Kid Hersh:

Crawford said that Viktor Postol did not really come to fight, instead coming to counterpunch because for every step forward he took Postol took one backwards.  Crawford said his game plan was to take away Postol’s jab and counter the right hand.

Crawford gave big props to sparring partner Maurice Hooker, who pushed him hard in camp.  Crawford plans on “just chilling out” after his big win.

Postol said that he did his best to make it a good fight but that Crawford did not come to exchange with him.  He pressed forward all night and tried to make a good fight for the fans but lost to the better man.

Postol thought that the point deduction in the eleventh round for hitting behind the head was “disrespectful” due to Crawford never getting warned for other infractions.

Oscar Valdez, who blasted out Argentina’s Matias Rueda in the second round to win the WBO World featherweight title, was elated and doing as many interviews as he possibly could.  On the fast knockout he said “I did not know it would end that quick, I thought it would go to a decision.”

Ryoto Murata hopes to win a world title soon and bolstered his chances with a first round knockout of maladroit George “Comanche Boy” Tahdooahnippah.  Bob Arum came to the podium and said “I see my friend Tom Loeffler (Gennady Golovkin’s promoter) in the audience. Maybe we can set up a fight between Ryoto and Golovkin in the Toyko Bowl.  You know what happened to Mr. Tyson there”

Oleksandr Gvozdyk, who had to come off the deck to stop Tommy Karpency, said that he had “a very bad showing” and a tough start to overcome. He went on to say that after the third round he knew that he had his man, but yet was disappointed in his showing. He promised to impress the fans next time out.

Check out highlights and complete results in this Boxing Channel video.

Terence Crawford Wins / Photo by Al Applerose.