By Bart Barry –
Saturday in the Bubble at MGM Grand in the mainevent of a dreadful ESPN card Nebraskan Terence “Bud” Crawford needed about 3 1/2 rounds and punches to stop overmatched Brit Kell “Special K” Brook. Referee Tony Weeks, generally the perfect man for any Crawford fight, lost interest in watching Brook get brutalized a bit quicker than expected, though no one complained. Bud got his victory, Brook got his paycheck, aficionados got to sleep early.
Bud did what had to be done to defend his fringe welterweight title and top spot in a hypothetical ranking that only matters so much when no one fights one another.
The title pound-for-pound was invented for Sugar Ray Robinson, if historians can be believed, to clarify how much better Robinson was than everyone else, especially what heavyweights dominated American sport. It was nobody’s obsession in the 1980s when the best welterweights and middleweights fought one another. It grew mighty longer legs during the Mayweather era when not-fighting was very much en vogue. It’s why it’s important right now for Bud – because he’s not-fighting anyone any aficionado wants to see him fight.
It’s a promoters-n-eggheads obsession these days, as a generation of kids raised on destination fights comes of age and isn’t quite sure what to do with someone like Teofimo Lopez who moved himself prematurely and succeeded. See, what Teofimo should’ve done is let his fight with Lomachenko marinate another few years – what we now call “waiting till there can be fans at the fights again” – and threatened his peers on Twitter and harangued his promoter for more money and given prickly interviews to various apps about what he couldn’t wait to do someday. Instead Teofimo stamped paid on Lomachenko’s overwrought pound-for-pound bill and sent him out the Bubble.
There was Bud, though, well ensconced in the Bubble on Saturday, making a demand of his promoter not for the one fight everyone wants to see with his peer Errol Spence, no, but instead with Manny Pacquiao, a 41-year-old Senator inactive for 17 months and semiretired from boxing. Bob Arum’s response was pitchperfect: After rambling about some Middle Eastern venue and ministers of health and such, he reassured Bud talks were ready to restart for a fight scheduled to happen either “before Ramadan or after”. Bud didn’t press his soon-to-be-89-year-old promoter either because his Midwestern sensibilities wouldn’t allow curtness with an elder or because Bud doesn’t really want Spence anymore.
That sentence was unwritable three years ago when Crawford first moved from junior welterweight. Back then Bud was everything we wanted in a fighter; he rose on merit, not hype, he cleaned-out a division before scaling higher, and he was a bit of a psychopath when any bell rang. He’s fatted now. Too much British cooking, lard, flour and boiling. No one thought so at the time, but Bud’s second fight as a welterweight, a 12-round bloodletting with Jose Benavidez, a one-legged former prodigy from Phoenix, was the most impressive thing Crawford has done since unifying titles at 140 pounds, maybe the most impressive thing he’s done since stopping an undefeated Yuriorkis Gamboa in 2014.
Now then, much of the grief we give Bud is grief intended for Arum, for the aspiring nonagenarian’s refusal to compromise with Al Haymon, whose PBC manages every welterweight worth Bud’s fighting. Arum knows this and can’t be bothered to do a thing about it. He wore gymnasium-casual to Bud’s postfight interview Saturday, talked trash about Spence’s upcoming opponent, Danny Garcia – ranked a halfdozen or more spots above Kell Brook – and enjoyed Bud’s giving him an out with the Pacquiao plea, a demand from Bud for money, not greatness.
Spence is not blameless in all this, but if he beats Garcia and Thurman and Pacquiao and moves to 154, is anyone not affiliated with Top Rank going to accuse him of ducking Bud?
Bud has real hate in his heart and alleviates some of the evil by semiannual sadism sessions with what luckless men Arum finds for him, men like Jeff Horn, Amir Khan and Egidijus Kavaliauskas. Saturday it was softened Kell Brook’s turn, and the best that can be said for Brook is that he acquitted himself well for a quarter fight then got out the ring without suffering much.
So strapping and muscular that Special K! Muscles and fists haven’t been Brook’s undoing as a professional, though – his face has. The first time Crawford put proper leather on Brook’s surgically repaired face Brook flew backwards as if detonated. From a jab. Some hours and words shall be lost by others to explaining the extraordinary leverage and concusiveness of Bud Crawford, when the truth of what happened is simpler. Brook is not that good, and Crawford is. When an aged b-level guy runs himself into the onrushing fist of a prime a-level guy what happened Saturday is what happens. Too much lifting was done for Top Rank’s choice of opponent last week for folks to let the simple explanation stand. After all, Brook was just a dozen GGG punches and another dozen Truth punches from being undefeated when Bud torqued him with that southpaw jab of his.
Brook took his loss gracefully, like a proper b-sider should, while hemming a bit when asked to fulfill his contractually obligated comparison of Crawford to Spence. He was there, after all, not to pique interest in a Crawford-Spence superfight his promoter can’t deliver but to make a soundbite ESPN can play before each of Crawford’s next couple, or halfdozen, nonevent title defenses, something such as “Spence wears you down like a kid, but Crawford hits like a man!” Brook wasn’t the perfect b-side, then, but he was a fine one, and really, who are we kidding?
Nobody was awake when Brook got interviewed.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
