Will Crawford Risk Legacy For Canelo Payday? Murtazaliev, Bohachuk The options

Canelo Alvarez’s decision to enter talks with William Scull on January 10 for a possible fight in May puts Terence Crawford in an uncertain position.

Four-division world champion Crawford was hoping to be the next opponent for unified super middleweight champion Canelo (62-2-2, 39 KOs), but it looks like he won’t get this mega-money fight.

Crawford options

Terence, 37, will now have to start thinking about fighting someone else to keep him busy while he waits. He’s confident Canelo will give him a payday in September. I don’t know if he will then, but you can understand why Crawford would think it would happen.

If Crawford doesn’t retire, these would be his best options for legacy and money:

– Sebastià Fundora
– Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis
—Tim Tszyu
– Serhii Bohachuk
– Bakhram Murtazaliev

Fundora will be busy with his highly anticipated title defense against Errol Spence and likely won’t be available until the second half of 2025. So if Crawford wants to fight him, he’ll have to sit on the shelf for a while longer.

He has already been sidelined since his narrow win over Israil Madrimov on August 3. We’re probably looking at Crawford being out of the ring for about a year and a half if he decides to wait for the Fundora match. That’s not the smartest thing for Crawford to do, but if he’s not willing to risk being beaten by Murtazaliev, Bohachuk, Tszyu or Ennis, it’s understandable why he’d choose to wait.

Most of those fights would require Turki Al-Shiekh to bankroll them for Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs) to be willing to face any of those guys. It’s not the kind of PPV where one of the promoters is willing to give you a massive guaranteed purse and hope the match sells out.

As we saw in the last Terence event against Israil Madrimov, it is not a PPV attraction. That’s why Turki needs to get involved so Crawford can fight any dangerous fighter at 154, like Murtazaliev or Bohachuk. Those fights would be tough for Crawford, even if he was young, but now that he’s in his 40s, these fighters would be nightmares for him.

Undisputed at 154?

If Crawford were bravewould face IBF 154-pound champion Murtazaliev (23-0, 17 KOs) in a unification match to put himself in position to face Fundora for the undisputed championship in the second half of 2025.

If Terence can capture the IBF belt, he can put pressure on Fundora to fight. Becoming the undisputed junior middleweight champion would raise Crawford’s stock in the boxing world, which could help him land the Canelo fight.

It still wouldn’t be a foregone conclusion that Bud would get the fight because, as we’ve seen above, Canelo can’t be pressured into fighting. He could ignore Crawford for the rest of his career, like he did with David Benavidez, and he won’t lose sleep over the criticism he receives from fans.