Crawford beating Canelo doesn't mean what you think it does
Putting the recent Crawfordmania into context (or: why weight divisions don't mean what they used to)
To many fans Terence Crawford’s win over Canelo Alvarez seemed to defy the logic of weight divisions, sending everyone scrambling for an explanation. The most popular one is that Crawford is the greatest fighter ever a generational talent ATG P4P superhuman. But a subset of fans saw the events of Saturday night differently: they saw a fighter who has spent his career beating smaller opponents fight someone broadly the same size as himself for the first time.
Most fans don’t realise the scale of the shift the sport went through in the 1980s when same-day weigh ins were scrapped in favour of weighing a fighter 24 hours before the fight. The change wasn’t immediately obvious in the 80s, 90s or even much of the 00s because a lot of the top fighters and trainers had come about in the old system. But over the last ~20 years a whole branch of sports science has sprouted up to support the cutting and rehydrating of weight; a pharmacy-range of supplements (legal and not) now supports a fighter’s strategic weight cutting; and there is a growing culture among trainers/gyms that encourages fighters to lose and rehydrate dangerous levels of weight to fight in divisions far lower than where they’d ‘naturally’ fight.
This isn’t an argument for or against ‘weight bullying’ or even an attempt to define what weight bullying is – many fans insist it isn’t a real thing, just a made-up term to discredit their favourite fighters. Rehydrating is within the rules of boxing. This is just an attempt to explain why weight divisions don’t mean the same thing they once did, and what Crawford being crowned super-middleweight king does mean.
Rehydration was part of the sport even when weigh ins were on the day of the fight, just not to the astronomical degrees some fighters do it today. Most fighters now do not fight at the weight that they are officially fighting at. Often they are not even close.
So how big is Terence Crawford? He is measured at 5 foot 9 inches tall but this is hard to believe. There are pictures of Crawford stood next to six foot tall Dmitry Bivol: from some angles Crawford looks taller, from others they look about the same. Kavaliauskas is also listed at 5 foot 9 but you can see in their fight Crawford is a few inches taller. Only one of his opponents has been taller than Crawford and that was Jose Benavidez Jr. More important than height is reach. Crawford has a 75-inch wingspan, bigger than any of his opponents. The closest any have come are Errol Spence Jr. and Dierry Jean, both at ‘72.
More important than either is a fighter’s weight and build. People like to bring up Thomas Hearns as an example of someone who moved up multiple divisions higher than where he started off and yet did so before the current era. But Hearns had a lanky frame and skinny long arms that allowed him to pack on weight without sacrificing much in speed, stamina etc. He was a bit of a genetic freak in that sense, it wasn’t something that could be easily emulated. He weighed in a fight similar to what he weighed at the weigh in, any advantages or disadvantages were contained within the agreed limits of the division he fought at. What fighters like Crawford and Jaron Ennis do is completely different. Crawford has a bulky frame and wide shoulders. He has long arms but he’s not lanky like Hearns, he’s able to rehydrate drastically and pack back on a good deal of muscle. Crawford is purposefully draining his body to fight in lower divisions. What advantages does this give? The obvious ones: if you weigh more than your opponent you will – on average – punch harder than your opponent and take a better punch than them. You are more likely to have height and reach advantages. More than this, someone who is just generally bigger than someone else is likely to have myriad other advantages – e.g. a higher bone density, bigger hands, ability to build greater muscle mass, etc.
Crawford has never once been outweighed on fight night. It’s hard to find fight night weights but they are occasionally made available. The earliest I could find for Crawford was from his October 2013 fight against Andrey Klimov at lightweight (135 lbs): Crawford rehydrated 14 lbs to 149 (compared to 140 for Klimov). There is no record of him having ever weighed less than the welterweight (147) limit on fight night.
In 2014 Crawford weighed 152 lbs against Yuriorkis Gambia at lightweight. For his second fight at light-welter (140) against Dierry Jean, Crawford weighed 155. People have claimed online that Jeff Horn outweighed Crawford based on the look of them: fight night weights are unavailable, but Horn did weigh 155 lbs against Manny Pacquiao a year before, also at welter, the same weight Crawford had been three years and one weight class ago, so it seems unlikely. Even going up to light-middleweight (154) Crawford rehydrated to 169.8 lbs whereas Madrimov, the career 154 lb’er, was 168.8. Look up pictures of the weigh in: Madrimov made the weight easily, Crawford looked like a skeleton, in interviews he was sluggish, clearly due to the malnourishment of his body. He had the height/weight/reach advantages, was a naturally bigger man, but was praised for a lacklustre performance because he supposedly fought at a disadvantage.
Against Canelo, Crawford had 4½ inch reach and supposedly 1½ inch height advantage, although the height difference looked bigger. Despite jumping up two weight classes, five from where he debuted, Crawford again looked emaciated at the weight in and visibly ‘filled out’ by the time of the fight, whereas Canelo made weight easily. (There’s no fight night weight available, at least not yet, but I’ve seen a youtuber claim that Crawford outweighed Canelo by three lbs; it’s hearsay but entirely believable looking at them.)
Pre-fight I predicted Canelo would win because I couldn’t understand why Crawford would’ve spent his career risking his health to slim down to lower weights if there was no reason for it. Maybe his power or chin didn’t hold up against fighters his own size? Or something about his style was predicated on having longer arms or being physically stronger in clinches? But the fight came and Crawford looked great. The weight played no negative effect in the fight. If anything, Crawford looked more fluid and threw at a higher volume than usual because there was less strain on his body to make weight. So... why the hell has he spent his career at the lower weights? It turns out Crawford truly is a great fighter – what a waste of what could’ve been a special career.
tl;dr 1) weight divisions don’t mean what they used to, the ‘actual’ weight/size of a fighter is more relevant; 2) to say someone is a champion in x number of divisions or has moved up x number of divisions from where they started doesn’t necessarily mean that that fighter has challenged themself or has ever fought at a disadvantage; 3) Crawford is far from the only boxer who does this, but no other boxer’s career has been defined more by weight advantage than his; 4) his win over Canelo should be seen in this context.
The last few days of hysteria have included pundits calling Crawford’s win over Canelo the ‘best win in boxing history’, fans declaring Crawford inarguably the pound for pound best fighter of his generation, one of the greatest fighters the sport has ever produced. None of this is because of who he beat or how – Canelo is a great fighter, and beating the undisputed champ of any division is a feat, but consensus is Canelo’s past his best, not shot but he hasn’t had a great win since 2021. Canelo had already been beaten by Floyd Mayweather and Dmitry Bivol, and to everyone other than the judges by Gennady Golovkin (once certainly, arguably twice) too. To compare all the wins against Canelo: Golovkin beat the best version of Canelo, Floyd beat the youngest but greenest, Bivol beat Canelo at the end of his best run, Crawford beat the oldest, and so the most experienced but also the slowest and most faded. Mayweather’s win was the most flawless, followed by Bivol’s, Crawford’s was the most competitive. Crawford had bigger physical advantages than Mayweather and Golovkin. Bivol is marginally bigger than Crawford, although Crawford has longer arms even than him.
And yet Crawford’s win is held above the others. All because someone wrote the words ‘light middleweight’ next to his last fight and ‘super-middleweight’ next to this one. But this ignores the reality of how big and small these fighters are. Crawford beating Canelo is no more impressive than if a 168 lb’er like Jermall Charlo or Christian Mbilli beat Canelo because Crawford moved up in weight – what's impressive is that he did beat Canelo, which I’m not sure each of the other two would do.
We know what it looks like for a fighter to move up, challenge himself, be outsized, and win: there are classic examples. When Manny Pacquiao moved to 154 lbs to fight Antonio Margarito, Pacquiao looked comically small by comparison. He was outsized by every metric... and gave Margarito the beating of his life. When Pernell Whitaker moved to 154 to dethrone Julio Cesar Vazquez, he visibly struggled with Vazquez’s size but used his superior skills to scrape by with a split decision. But this was a fighter challenging himself to be great. It makes no sense to compare Crawford to what Pacquiao or Whittaker did. Boxing has changed but most people have not acknowledged it. Crawford is praised as a generational great for finally beating someone his own size but Dmitry Bivol supposedly can’t be rated as highly because he has only ever fought in one division, despite the fact he is almost always the smaller man: Beterbiev filled out a lot for their fights, and Zurdo and Zinad were man-mountains in comparison.
Compare Crawford to current p4p number one Oleksandr Usyk, who has beaten men who outweigh him by up to 60 lbs, had up to seven inches in reach and five inches in height on him, and he’s done it continually for years now. Usyk’s friend Vasily Lomachenko spent the second half of his career only fighting opponents bigger than himself but gets less respect because he had a few losses along the way.
The divisions are irrelevant, only the names matter. Looking only at names, Crawford’s resume looks thin. But he just added a great one to the list and hopefully he’ll add a few more before he goes. If he wants to challenge himself like the greats did he’ll try to add the name Bivol to that list.