After waiting years to get this opportunity, Terence Crawford made everything out of this opportunity as he survived a huge effort from former two-time Welterweight Champion Shawn Porter to retain his WBO Welterweight title after scoring a TKO in round 10.
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The fight opened up with Porter being effective and aggressive in his attack and made the most of Crawford’s slow start but the champ slowly gained momentum to set up his attack as the fight moved forward. With both the fighters now going offensive, Porter rose to the occasion and defended himself in a punch-for-punch battle with the champ.
With the fight going on, both men saw huge cuts over their eyes from a clash of heads which was caused by both boxers using opposite stances. The biggest weapon in Crawford’s arsenal was his vicious body strikes which kicked into another level as Porter slowed down which took the fight in Bud’s favor. For the following rounds, both of them exchanged some heavy blows and the news broke out that Porter was leading the judges’ scorecard.
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Crawford came to know about this after round 9 and in the 10th round, he just had to prove himself and knock his opponent out. A left uppercut dropped Porter to the canvas and as soon as he was back up on his feer Crawford unloaded with a beautiful combination to score a second knockdown.
Porter still showed a Lion’s heart as rose back to his feet but his father and trainer saw that there was no point in getting back at Crawford and jumped on the ring apron to call a halt to the fight after 1:21 of round 10. At first, Crawford was unhappy with his father’s decision to stop the fight but later when he was asked about the situation he said, “ He’s doing what he knows he needs to do. I didn’t expect that, we’ve never had a conversation about that. We’ve always had an unspoken understanding that if he sees what he needs to see, he’ll do what he has to do. The punches were catching me too clean and my dad saw that.”
As for Crawford, after the fight, he claimed that the decision was a correct one and that he had figured out Porter’s gameplan in the first round itself and was breaking him down to a point from where there’s no coming back.
In the post-fight interview, he said, “I know I caught him with a good uppercut. When I caught him with another left hook, I saw it in his face that he was really hurt. His dad did the right thing by stopping it. I was coming with a vengeance”
[Featured Image Credit: Top Rank Boxing]
Shashank Iyer