Terence Crawford has heard all the chatter lately.
Some critics believe that he struggled despite pulling off a unanimous decision over Israil Madrimov to become the new WBA super welterweight world champion. Others connect that performance in deducing that Crawford moving up another two weight classes to possibly clash with a 168-pound Canelo Alvarez would be too much for even the consensus pound-for-pound best to handle.
But to those assertions, Crawford offers a pointed counterpunch.
"It's crazy because they talk all the crazy stuff about me going up and having a tough time, but [Alvarez] went up in weight and lost," Crawford recently pinpointed on "The PorterWay Podcast."
"That's the difference," he continued. "I went up in weight and won. He went up and lost so let's not do that, Canelo."
With that comparison, Crawford is stacking his successful move up from 147 pounds to 154 pounds to Alvarez moving up to light heavyweight and taking a loss to Dmitry Bivol via unanimous decision in May 2022.
However, Alvarez was attempting a second reign as light heavyweight world champion with that bout as he already won a 175-pound world title by knocking out Sergey Kovalev in November 2019.
Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs) and Alvarez (61-2-2, 39 KOs) are each four-division world champions.
The two have been linked together for a possible mega bout but chances of the dream fight took a hit earlier this week when Turki Alalshikh seemed to turn the page on the fight.
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