Sports
‘That’s the only fight I want’: How Terence Crawford landed Canelo Alvarez
LAS VEGAS — Shortly after moving up in weight and eking out a win in the closest fight of his career, Terence Crawford — then on the cusp of his 37th birthday — was insisting on jumping another two divisions to fight the undisputed 168-pound champion, Canelo Alvarez. This was 13 months ago. Crawford was addressing an audience of one: his patron, the Saudi Arabian boxing financier, Turki Alalshikh.
Even by boxing standards — I use the term advisedly, as boxing has only few and dubious standards — it seemed a semi-preposterous idea. Alalshikh shot him a look. “But the weight?” he said.
Actually, it was more than just the weight. Both history and common sense favor not merely the naturally bigger man, but the younger one, and the so-called “A side.” Paired with Canelo — boxing’s leading man, who had already generated almost half a billion dollars in purses — Crawford was none of those things. What’s more, he would do it without insisting on any of the usual contractual niceties designed to even the odds: no catchweight, no rehydration clause.
Alalshikh proposed a couple of very lucrative, if more sensible, alternatives: Vergil Ortiz Jr. or Jaron “Boots” Ennis, each of them undefeated young stars with great ambition at 154 pounds. Crawford refused to entertain either option. “Boots is not a megafight,” he said. “Vergil Ortiz is not a megafight. This is the tail end of my career. They’re going to say, ‘You were supposed to win.’ I want Canelo Alvarez.”
He wanted the fight he wasn’t supposed to win.
“OK,” said Alalshikh, relenting. “I’m going to try to get that fight for you.”
“That’s the only fight I want,” said Crawford.
Thirteen months hence, Canelo and Crawford will fight Saturday at Allegiant Stadium. Canelo agreed to the fight in return for a purse believed to be in excess of $100 million (“More than that,” Alalshikh proclaimed at Thursday’s news conference) — an offer that even the sport’s leading man couldn’t refuse. But it all began with Crawford. “That’s how we got here,” he says.
A generation of fighters has come to look upon Canelo less as a rival than as a score, a jackpot, a career payday. Their victories, it seems, were signing the contracts, not fighting the fights. But Crawford looks to Canelo as his white whale, something he was stalking long before that meeting with Alalshikh: an existential corrective for everything he believes has afflicted his career, an answer for every slight going back to the amateurs, from fighters who wouldn’t fight him to promoters who failed to promote him, a source of eternal respect and stature. But only if he wins.
In fact, Crawford has been studying Canelo since at least 2015, when he showed up at Mandalay Bay to watch Alvarez beat a future Hall of Famer, Miguel Cotto, for his first middleweight title. Crawford, by comparison, then held the WBO junior welterweight title. “I didn’t think fighting Canelo would be a thing,” he says. “We were too far apart in weight classes.”
Gradually, though, it would become a thing. In 2021, Crawford — by then a welterweight champion, though desperately lacking for worthy opponents — attended Alvarez’s stay-busy fight against somebody named Avni Yildirim in Miami. Canelo, now the WBC’s 168-pound champion, knocked out Yildirim in the third round. But even as he did, the seed had been planted. Crawford wouldn’t mention it in public, but it was in the back of his mind.
By 2023, though, he had begun his behind-the-scenes campaign to land a Canelo fight. Late that year, he met with then-WBO president Francisco “Paco” Valcarcel in Puerto Rico and broached the idea.
“I was shocked,” recalls Valcarcel. While Crawford had now beaten Errol Spence Jr. to become undisputed at 147 pounds, Canelo — who had already won a world title by knockout at 175 — was undisputed at 168. “Why don’t you wait a couple years?” Valcarcel advised gently.
“I can’t wait,” Crawford shot back, citing his age. “I can beat him.”
By now, Crawford was a regular at Canelo’s biannual fights, and still fresh in his mind was Canelo’s victory over Jermell Charlo. Charlo, coming up from 154 pounds, was dropped in Round 7. After that, though, it was all paint-by-numbers. “He didn’t fight to win,” Crawford says of Charlo. “He just fought to survive.”
In many respects, Canelo-Charlo has become an all-too-familiar template in the arc of Alvarez’s career: a single knockdown that lumbers on predictably to a unanimous decision. Such was the case in Canelo’s wins over the likes of John Ryder, Jaime Munguia and Edgar Berlanga.
“They wanted the payday,” Crawford tells me. “They didn’t want to win the fight. Going the 12 rounds was a victory to them.”
If Canelo’s most recent victory — for which Crawford traveled all the way to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — lacked even the pro forma knockdown, his opponent, William Scull, was intent on nothing so much as survival. Crawford, meanwhile, fights only to destroy.
That said, if it’s fair to judge Canelo based on past performances, what of Crawford’s? His last fight, moving up to 154 and winning a close if unanimous decision over the estimable Israil Madrimov, fell far short of making a case for Canelo.
“Madrimov taught me patience,” says Crawford. “He was so herky-jerky and so explosive — bouncing back and forth, all those crazy antics. But Canelo doesn’t have any of that in his arsenal. I don’t have to worry about any of that with him.”
What about the age, though? Alvarez is 35. Crawford is two weeks from his 38th birthday, old by the standards of any division in any era, and certainly not an optimal time to jump up multiple divisions. Then again, Alvarez has fought at least 520 rounds (maybe more, as there are believed to be several early fights of his that never made it into the records) as a pro. He has had two competitive fights with the hard-hitting Gennadiy Golovkin, and losses to Floyd Mayweather and, more recently, Dmitry Bivol. Crawford, for his part, has never been beaten, or beaten down, in 245 pro rounds. Who’s older in boxing years? I wonder.
“He is for sure,” says Crawford. “He started fighting professional at 15.”
Still, Alvarez remains not merely the “A side,” but an economy unto himself. Considering the fight is on Mexican Independence Day weekend, it will certainly be a pro-Canelo crowd, but more than that, Canelo will be the presumptive beneficiary of any doubt on the judges’ scorecards. Crawford doesn’t disagree. He knows he can’t fight his typical fight, which involves a relatively slow start as he downloads his opponent’s tendencies. He needs to start fast.
“Of course, of course,” he says. “I got to set the tone. You have to set the tone with Canelo — to let the judges know you’re putting rounds in the bank. That’s how I look at it: one round at a time. Don’t go in and try to get a knockout in the first round. Just put rounds in the bank. And make sure you’re winning those rounds decisively.”
The way Crawford explains it — the way he has been explaining it to himself for years now — makes his existential errand sound, well, perfectly reasonable. Maybe that’s how you hunt white whales, even those with red hair, when the only thing you want is what you’re not supposed to have.
January transfers usually don’t work out. Granted, most transfers usually don’t work out, but the winter window is when an already-inefficient market becomes a place where you’re paying 80 cents for the opportunity to guess heads or tails on a coin flip with a 20-cent payout.
January signings tend to have about a 20% markup when compared with similar signings made in the summer. Over the past decade, there have been very few — if any — teams who made a big winter signing and then got carried by that player to a title that wouldn’t have otherwise happened. And one study found that about 50% of strikers signed in this window have gone on to score zero goals from their arrival through the end of the season.
This isn’t to say that January signings are all destined to fail. Just look at Virgil van Dijk, Bruno Fernandes or Martin Ødegaard. But in most cases, if you’re spending lots of money on signings that you know are going to cost extra and are unlikely to make a massive difference between now and the end of the season, then you’re desperate.
And, well, Premier League clubs have spent more than €400 million on transfers over the past month, while no other league spent more than €230 million. The most desperate clubs in the world are the ones in the richest league in the world because the average level of play has never been higher, and neither has the reward for finishing higher up in the table.
Which teams, though, were the most desperate in this transfer window that closed Monday? We’ve ranked all 20 Premier League teams from the least to the most desperate.
Not desperate, but they could’ve been
20. Liverpool
19. Wolverhampton Wanderers
18. Arsenal
17. Newcastle United
16. Burnley
One of my favorite recurring bits of commentary, fan reaction and general internet angst is this one about Liverpool. The team spent a club record amount of money and added seven new players this past summer, they let a bunch of key players leave, and it totally disrupted the progress and cohesion of the team. So, therefore, the solution to this problem must be: to sign even more new players.
Liverpool have a lot of injuries, they’re likely to end up in a three-for-two battle with Chelsea and Manchester United for the final two spots in the Champions League (even with a possible extra fifth place), and they have a decent shot at winning the Champions League. They responded to that by … not signing anyone. This should surprise absolutely no one.
The last time they were in a similar position, they finished the season with Nat Phillips and Rhys Williams as their starting center backs — and still qualified for the Champions League. They did make a €60 million signing at center back, of course, but Rennes’ star Jérémy Jacquet won’t join the club until the summer.
Arsenal, meanwhile, have depth to spare, going two or three deep at every position. Despite the furor over their 3-2 loss to Manchester United last weekend, they’ve remained big favorites to win the league. A week later, they’re even bigger favorites to win the league after Manchester City and Aston Villa dropped points. Newcastle, meanwhile, continue to operate in a way that I don’t really understand — what is the Saudi ownership group actually trying to achieve here by not throwing their financial weight around more?
At the other end of the table, Wolves and Burnley have both made some minor moves — both ins and outs — as they each seem resigned to the fact that they won’t be in the Premier League next season. Wolves’ one big move was an outgoing one: They’re collecting close to €50 million in exchange for allowing Jørgen Strand Larsen to move to Crystal Palace.
We signed someone — but he’s not playing any time soon
15. Brentford
14. AFC Bournemouth
13. Sunderland
Brentford and Sunderland both signed young players you’ve probably never heard of (Kaye Furo and Nilson Angulo, anyone?), and Bournemouth let their best player (Antoine Semenyo) leave for Man City and then signed a couple of much-more expensive young players who you actually might have heard of (Rayan and Alex Tóth). None of these teams are doing anything where the goal is to maximize the number of points they win this season.
We signed someone — but he’s going to be playing for us for a long time
12. Fulham
It felt like a big deal when Oscar Bobb was injured last season … as in, Manchester City appeared to be relying on him to play significant minutes as part of their forward rotation. A year-and-a-half later, he’s off to Fulham for a fee (€31 million) that seems (a) way too low for a 22-year-old I was able to write that previous sentence about, and (b) way too high for a player who has a goal and two assists in seven Premier League starts. He has attempted eight total shots in the league.
That said, I don’t hate the risk for Fulham, who aren’t in danger of being relegated this season but need the squad to get younger as soon as possible. Now, I would not have felt the same way about the potential, similarly priced move for PSV’s Ricardo Pepi, but that fell apart on the last day of the window.
We’ll take a small bite, why not?
11. Brighton & Hove Albion
10. Leeds United
9. Everton
8. Nottingham Forest
Using the projections from Simon Tinsley’s website, Analytic.Football, all these teams have a combined 2% chance of finishing in the top five and a combined 17% chance of being relegated. All of the relegation equity comes from Leeds and Forest, who both signed a player or two on loan, while Forest also signed Man City’s backup keeper Stefan Ortega, permanently.
The meager Champions League probabilities come just from Brighton and Everton. Neither team made any permanent transfers — just a couple of loans to add some depth and plug some minor holes.
We have our feet in the freezer and our heads in the oven
7. Crystal Palace
There’s a joke among statisticians that if your head is in the oven and your feet are in the freezer, then your average body temperature would suggest that everything is fine. And I think that just about sums up the current situation at Palace.
Their head coach Oliver Glasner already announced that he’s leaving after the season, they let their club captain, Marc Guéhi, leave for City, and star striker Jean-Philippe Mateta announced he wanted to leave, only for AC Milan to pull out of a deal on deadline day. This season is clearly a wash … right?
Well, they also spent €90 million combined on winger Brennan Johnson and striker Jørgen Strand Larsen. Johnson was a fine signing for a team that badly needed forward depth, but JSL literally has one goal this season, and he’s a striker. He’s barely attempting more than one shot per game. They also brought in Evann Guessand on loan from Aston Villa. With the Champions League out of reach, I guess this is all for a potential UEFA Conference League run?
1:39
Has Crystal Palace’s transfer strategy let them down again?
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We fired our coaches but didn’t sign any new players
6. Manchester United
5. Chelsea
There’s the new manager bump, and then there’s whatever is happening at both of these clubs, who have scored 16 goals from 10.6 xG in Liam Rosenior’s and Michael Carrick’s first three matches. Can the performances catch up with the results? It usually doesn’t work that way.
We just wanted a better, younger version of what we already had
4. Tottenham Hotspur
I think Conor Gallagher is a fantastic, Champions League-quality midfielder. He’s right at the beginning of his prime years, and Spurs got him for a €40 million fee — less than Palace paid to bring in Strand Larsen, who is the same age. In a vacuum, this is a solid move for the team currently 14th in the table.
In reality, Gallagher is a hard-working, glue-guy-type midfielder, and Tottenham already have a bunch of those. The midfield still doesn’t really offer any skill at the main thing midfielders are supposed to do: pass the ball.
We’re sure doing a lot
3. West Ham United
2. Manchester City
Two wins from their past three have the Hammers at least within touching distance of 17th place. They’re still heavy favorites to be relegated, but there’s enough of a chance that they survive that you could at least make the case that a bunch of “win-now” signings would be worth it.
It seems as if they’ve tried to both plan for a future in the Championship and improve the team right now. How else to explain the decision to let Lucas Paquetá leave for a €42.25 million return to Brazil while at the same time bringing in 27-year-old forward Valentín Castellanos from Lazio? They’ve signed two other players: 22-year-old Pablo from Gil Vicente in Portugal and 30-year-old Adama Traoré from Fulham.
Back at the other end of the table, Man City’s transfer business continues to baffle. They paid an extra €23 million to bring in Palace defender Marc Guéhi, who would’ve been a free agent after the season. And then they paid €72 million to sign 26-year-old winger Semenyo, who has been great for Bournemouth but doesn’t really seem as if he helps with a position of need for a team with plenty of excellent attackers.
In a league in which there are real spending controls now, you don’t spend nearly €100 million on transfer fees for those two players unless you’re desperate.
We don’t care about the future because the present is a gift
1. Aston Villa
Villa are the second-oldest team in the league by average age. They’ve signed and loaned two players in; they’ve transferred and loaned two players out. The average age of the players who left: 25.5; the average age of the players who arrived: 27.5.
They’ve signed Douglas Luiz on loan from Juventus — and they badly need midfield depth — but you only spend €2 million on a 15-game loan when you’re desperate. This team don’t have unlimited money, and the squad is going to need to start getting younger really soon, but Villa have instead invested €21 million into signing 28-year-old Tammy Abraham. It doesn’t get more “win-now” than those two moves.
Villa are currently seven points clear of sixth-place Liverpool. They just spent a lot of money to make sure that gap doesn’t get closed up over the next three months.
Cricket’s T20 World Cup begins Saturday after an acrimonious build‑up overshadowed by political turmoil, with Bangladesh kicked out and Pakistan refusing to face arch-rivals and co-hosts India.
When the first ball is finally bowled after a chaotic lead-in, Pakistan will open the tournament against the Netherlands in Colombo.
Defending champions and tournament favourites India will make their tournament bow in the night match on day one against the United States in Mumbai, carrying the hopes of a billion-plus home cricket supporters.
Led by Suryakumar Yadav, India will start as firm tournament favourites and are expected to ease into the Super Eight stage from Group A.
But they will be wary of the United States, who are looking to take down another cricketing powerhouse, having shocked Pakistan to make the Super Eights in 2024.
Former champions Australia and England are also strong contenders to lift the trophy and deny holders India the title for a record second straight time.
The 2021 winners Australia have been hit hard by the absence of pace spearhead Pat Cummins, who was ruled out with a lower back injury.
Pace bowler Josh Hazlewood will miss the early stages as he recovers from hamstring and Achilles injuries.
Led by Mitchell Marsh, the Australians should still ease into the next round from Group B against Ireland, who they play first on Wednesday, plus co-hosts Sri Lanka Oman and Zimbabwe.
Harry Brook’s England, full of confidence after a 3-0 T20 series win in Sri Lanka this week, are expected to make the Super Eights from a Group C that also features two-time winners West Indies, debutants Italy, Nepal and Scotland.
Brook, under intense scrutiny after having to apologise for an incident with a night club bouncer in New Zealand last year, takes charge at a global tournament for the first time since he replaced Jos Buttler as white ball captain.
England, who start with a match against Nepal on Sunday in Mumbai, won the tournament in 2010 and 2022.
Scotland, after their 11th-hour call-up to replace Bangladesh, will take guard on the opening day when they face the West Indies in Kolkata.
Football powerhouse Italy will make an appearance at a cricket World Cup for the first time, and will kick off against the Scots in Kolkata on Monday.
South Africa, the runners-up in 2024, have never won a white ball World Cup, but are buoyed by winning the World Test Championship last year.
They will be a threat but must first emerge from a tough-looking Group D that contains dangerous opponents in New Zealand and Afghanistan.
They begin against Canada on Monday in Ahmedabad, with the UAE the other team in that group.
The top two teams from each of the four groups of five teams will advance to the Super Eights, with the top four making the semi-finals.
Politics, pullouts
There will be relief at the weekend when the action gets under way finally after weeks of political posturing that has dominated the build-up to 10th edition of the showpiece tournament.
Bangladesh refused to play in India, citing security concerns, as relations between the two countries soured and were kicked out by the International Cricket Council (ICC) from England’s Group C.
The ICC is led by Jay Shah, the former Indian cricket board secretary and son of the powerful Indian home minister Amit Shah.
Pakistan, who had backed Bangladesh’s plea to have their games moved to Sri Lanka, were cleared to play by the Islamabad government but they ordered the team not to play the marquee group clash against fierce rivals India on February 15.
According to media reports, the ICC is still waiting formal communication from the Pakistan Cricket Board on the boycott, leaving the door slightly ajar for a last-minute deal to get the game on.
If India are awarded a walkover, Pakistan will lose two points and take a big hit to their net run rate.
If any of their other three Group A games are lost to the weather then it could make it almost impossible for Pakistan to qualify.
Pakistan’s pullout will result in a loss of millions of dollars in revenue for broadcasters, and will be a huge letdown for fans on both sides.
The crisis was triggered last month when India’s cricket board ordered the IPL’s Kolkata Knight Riders to drop Bangladesh fast bowler Mustafizur Rahman, a move that deepened political strains between the neighbours.
The tournament will conclude with the final on March 8 in Ahmedabad or Colombo, depending on whether Pakistan go that far.
Manchester City’s Omar Marmoush (L) celebrates scoring against Newcastle. Photo: AFP
MANCHESTER:
Manchester City will face Arsenal in the League Cup final after ending Newcastle’s reign as holders with a first-half blitz in their 3-1 victory on Wednesday.
Pep Guardiola’s side were already in pole position after winning the semi-final first leg on Tyneside in January and they finished the job in ruthless fashion at the Etihad Stadium.
Omar Marmoush struck twice in the first half of the second leg before Tijjani Reijnders put the result beyond doubt.
Anthony Elanga reduced the deficit after the interval, but City’s 5-1 aggregate win sent them back to the League Cup showpiece for the first time since 2021.
City’s final date with Arsenal is set for March 22 at Wembley after the Premier League leaders knocked out Chelsea on Tuesday.
Reaching the final was a welcome tonic for Guardiola following the frustration of blowing a two-goal lead in a 2-2 draw at Tottenham on Sunday that delivered a major blow to their title challenge.
With a crucial trip to Liverpool looming this weekend, City trail Arsenal by six points in the Premier League title race.
The League Cup was the first silverware of Guardiola’s City reign when they beat Arsenal in the 2018 final, with current Gunners boss Mikel Arteta then working as the Spaniard’s assistant.
City went on to win the competition for the following three years, but haven’t lifted the League Cup since 2021.
“We will travel to London again, they will wait for us there. They never travel to the north (for finals) but I am really happy to be back. Five (League Cup) finals in 10 years is a big milestone,” Guardiola said.
“It will be good. You have to live this experience. The first title we won here was in the League Cup.
“When you win something, it helps to win more. It’s a pleasure to play against Arsenal, the best team right now in Europe and maybe the world.”
Newcastle boss Eddie Howe added: “Really annoyed with the first half display. We pride ourselves on being really organised and tactically we want to be able to handle any problem the opposition gives us.
“That first half we weren’t good enough individually and our duels were off and it gave us huge problems.”
Guardiola used sarcasm and statistics this week to defend City against claims the club’s success has been due to the financial muscle of their Abu Dhabi-based owners.
The City manager pointed out six English clubs have spent more than his side over the past five years, but he knows he will never win over the critics.
Slick City
Guardiola’s only way to silence the outside noise — and mounting suggestions that City are a team in decline — is with silverware.
And after finishing last season without a trophy for the first time in eight years, Guardiola would love to end City’s barren spell at Arsenal’s expense.
Marmoush put City ahead with a stroke of luck in the seventh minute.
He raced into the Newcastle penalty area and when Dan Burn made a last-ditch tackle, the ball bounced off the Egypt forward and looped into the net.
James Trafford preserved City’s lead, saving from Joe Willock and Anthony Gordon in quick succession.
Marmoush struck for the second time in the 29th minute, heading home from virtually on the goal-line after Kieran Trippier made a hash of clearing Antoine Semenyo’s cross.
That was the culmination of an incisive City counter-attack and they pulled Newcastle apart again with another rapid raid in the 32nd minute.
Reijnders led the break, picking out Semenyo and racing into the area to finish the Ghanaian’s return pass with a clinical low drive from 12 yards.
City barely got out of first gear in the second half and Elanga got one back in the 62nd minute, curling into the far corner after slaloming through the defence.
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