THERE was a moment the day before Terence Crawford fought Errol Spence in July when everything seemed to fall into place. It was not at the final press conference, where the fighters nearly got into an altercation that almost spilled into war between rival factions from Omaha and New York, the respective fan bases of Crawford and Spence.
The standout moment happened when Crawford took to the stage for the weighin. Or, at least, it looked like Crawford. Master of ceremonies Jimmy Lennon had introduced him. It had to be him.
But the person in front of thousands at the T-Mobile in a sweltering, red-hot Las Vegas to witness the ceremonial weigh-in appeared different. Crawford bounded up the stairs to the stage. He swaggered; arms open wide, unable to control the grin that sprawled unreservedly across his face.
Crawford, and by now you could clearly see it was actually him, lip-synced to Lil Wayne’s Mr Carter. He danced, gestured to the crowd and looked, on the eve of his greatest challenge, happier, more comfortable and more invested in his own story than at any point in his 40-fight career.
Because Crawford sparingly gives off such joyous vibes in public, if ever. He is a notoriously difficult interview. Several A4 sheets of questions, enough for a moderately deep dive, can be eviscerated with monosyllabic and disinterested answers in five minutes flat.
Crawford is not trusting of others. He comes from a place where he knows who has his back, and if he doesn’t know you, or you have not proved it to him, you aren’t with him.
As he smeared Spence’s features across the gory Nevada ring a day later, he did so with a similar balletic gusto as to how he had bopped to . The pleasure
