Crawford: My next fight should be against Pacquiao

Terence Crawford has his hand raised in victory after defeating Lithuania’s Egidijus Kavaliauskas by TKO in the ninth round of a WBO welterweight boxing match, Saturday, Dec. 14, 2019, in New York. (AP Photo/Michael Owens)

MANILA, Philippines—Terence Crawford is undoubtedly one of the best fighters of his generation but he’s still aiming for that one grand draw against a legend in Manny Pacquiao.

In an interview with The Last Stand Podcast with Brian Custer, Crawford said he wants his next opponent to be the Filipino boxing champion in a welterweight match that would unify the WBO and WBA titles.

Top Rank CEO Bob Arum, the current promoter of Crawford and who once had Pacquiao under his umbrella, said he has been working on bringing a fight that would pit the two 147-pound champions against each other.

“My next fight should be Pacquiao,” said Crawford. “We’re in talks with Team Pacquiao and I’ve been hoping that fight can get made, but anything after that I really can’t say because I’m only looking forward to the next fight, so if we can get that fight secure and signed then hopefully that can be our next fight.

Crawford (36-0), the WBO World welterweight titlist, is no.4 in The Ring Magazine’s pound-for-pound list and was the undisputed super lightweight champion in 2017 before moving up weight to defeat Jeff Horn, the man who once beat Pacquiao, for his 147-lb belt.

Pacquiao (62-7-2), who is nine years older than the 32-year-old Crawford, is considered as one of boxing’s greatest ever fighters and is the sport’s only eight-division World champion, winning titles from flyweight all the way to junior middleweight.

The Filipino icon is on a three-match winning streak after his loss to Horn in 2017. He first scored a knockout win over Lucas Matthysse for the WBA “regular” welterweight title then defended that championship in a lopsided decision over Adrien Broner before taking the Super title from Keith Thurman via split decision in 2019.

Putting a fight between Crawford and Pacquiao, however, could be tricky as the latter is under the Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) stable.

“Sky the limit for me right now, I’m looking for all the big opportunities and all the champions. I’m gunning for all of them,” said Crawford.

Most of the top welterweights, however, are with PBC including WBC and IBF champion Errol Spence.

“Once it came to a point where it was some of their big fighters, they didn’t want to put them in the ring with me because they didn’t want to have Top Rank have the edge over their head where one of their fighters took out one of their top welterweights fighters. So in a sense they (PBC) just fight each other, let’s just take each other out, and see what he does in the meantime and we’ll go from there,” said Crawford.