Terence Crawford delivered a savage assessment of Jermell Charlo’s lacklustre efforts against Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez after being called out by his fellow undisputed world champion.
Light-middleweight king Charlo made a bold two-division jump to face boxing’s biggest superstar for all the super-middleweight belts in Las Vegas on Saturday night, hoping to emulate Crawford’s recent achievements and be just the second man ever to become undisputed at two different weights in the four-belt era.
However, ‘Iron Man’ did not even get close to achieving any sort of upset at the T-Mobile Arena, dominated from the outset and dropped for only the second time in his professional career as he lost comfortably on the judges’ scorecards, 119-108, 118-109, 118-109.
It was just Charlo’s second pro loss to follow his surprise points defeat by Tony Harrison in 2018 and came with something of a whimper as he found the two-division jump just much too difficult to bridge on the night.
“I feel like it wasn’t me in there, I don’t make excuses,” he said. “You win some, you lose some. I’m undisputed in my weight, I was daring to be great. I’m proud of myself, he didn’t knock me out, he knocked all the other guys out.”
Charlo indicated that he would now return to the 154-pound division that he rules, and where he signalled his intention to face Crawford in the event that ‘Bud’ now moves up after his thorough dismantling of Errol Spence Jr last month to become undisputed at welterweight.
“I wanna fight Terence Crawford,” he added. “I can fight Terence Crawford in my weight division. I’ll fight Terence Crawford. I’m waiting.”
@TwinCharlo you went out sad. Didn’t even try to win, all you did was try to survive. You should be ashamed of yourself.
— Terence Crawford (@terencecrawford) October 1, 2023
However, such a confident call out was met with an instant and withering response by Crawford, who slammed Charlo’s passive performance against Canelo and insisted he was not interested in accepting the challenge.
Writing directly to Charlo on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, Crawford said: “You went out sad. Didn’t even try to win, all you did was try to survive. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Crawford then wrote to his own followers: “Ok y’all I’m over @TwinCharlo he’s no longer on my hit list. He went out there and laid down and let Canelo spank him like he was his daddy with no type of resistance.”
In a message to Canelo, Crawford then said: “Congratulations @Canelo you made the so called lion look like a baby cub.”
The triumphant Canelo, meanwhile, revealed that he would next fight on Cinco de Mayo weekend in 2024, though when asked if that could be a mammoth showdown with David Benavidez, simply replied: “I don’t give a f**k.”
Crawford and Canelo have also both previously indicated a willingness to face each other in a massive super-fight in future.
