Terence Crawford Offers Encouragement to Shakur Stevenson
Unified welterweight champion Terence “Bud” Crawford (40-0, 31KO) came to the defense of WBC lightweight champion Shakur “Fearless” Stevenson (22-0, 10KO). In addition, he wants Stevenson to remember how all the greats had to deal with being criticized.
Fearless has come under heavy fire over the last several days following a lackluster victory over Artem Harutyunyan on July 6. Video of fans walking out of the event has gone viral. The New Jersey native has been on social media, trading verbal shots back and forth with those within the boxing community.
TAKING UP FOR HIS FRIEND
Bud and Fearless are close, as they both used to fight under the Top Rank banner. During an interview with Brian Mazique, Crawford offered advice for his former stablemate.
“Those ain’t real supporters, you can’t worry about those individuals . . . But at the same time, who cares . . . he looked sharp, and he won with flying colors.”
“All the greats have been through those types of adversity moments . . . people talked bad about Floyd Mayweather, people talked bad about me, and people talked bad about [Muhammad] Ali. People are going to talk bad about the great ones.”
Yes, there was a time when Ali was considered a boring fighter, and the latter half of Mayweather’s career saw him heavily disliked by fans. Fighters getting criticized is a part of the sport, and whether they like it or not, it is self-inflicted at times.
Crawford is right in saying ‘who cares’. The reality is Stevenson needs to ignore all the noise and focus on putting on a spectacular performance in the next fight.
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