MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Instant Reaction: Terence Crawford’s calculated adjustments show his dominance

Episode Date: November 15, 2020

Brian Campbell is here with an instant reaction to Terence Crawford vs. Kell Brook. What’s next for each fighter? What adjustments led to this win? Brian breaks it all down here. --------------------------------- 'Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn and wherever else you listen to podcasts.    For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit: store.sho.com   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat  To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

you hear that paid and done that's the sound of bills being paid on time but with the bimo eclipse rise visa card paying your bills could sound like this yes earn rewards for paying your bill in full and on time each month rise to rewards with the bimo Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. Saturday night proved all right for fighting for Terrence Bud Crawford in defense of his WBO title in Las Vegas with a thrilling or scintillating, how about just demolishing fourth round TKO against Kell Brook. It was a slow start. It was a tremendous finish for Terrence Crawford, maybe. I mean, certainly in that discussion,

for your pound-for-pound best fighter in the world. And you know the MK to the morning combat has your back. IA style instant analysis. My name is Brian Campbell, your boy BC, Big Beige One, whatever you want to call me. Call me one half of your morning combat duo every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. you know the drill live breakdowns of all things combat sports boxing mma a little bit of humor thrown in the best interviews in the game breakdowns of fights like i don't have to i don't have to read you the mk resume you know who we are so please like this video uh subscribe to

the channel because uh you know mk to the ultra. It's taking over. It's taking over your life, your face hole. It's about to brainwash you, all right? So here's what it was. Look, I got Kenan Alavarez as my pound-for-pound king. I got Naoa Inoue at number two. I got Terrence Bud Crawford at three, but this was another performance here on Saturday night against Kell Brook

that, you know, you got him at number one. What else are you going to say? That's a nasty, dominant performance. And if you're not a regular day-to-day boxing guy you're like oh well brooke didn't show up that's not the that's not really what happened here uh kel brooke is a former champion he's got you know on paper as good as skills as anyone to give uh terence crawford a challenge i know he's 34 i know there were questions of could he make weight moving back down to welterweight and still be fresh. He looked like a million bucks on the scale on Friday. I mean, he went for it. You could tell whatever was left of 34-year-old Kel Brook, we were going to get it once you saw him on that scale. And let's give Kel credit. It's not the

same guy who beat Sean Porter in 2014. Yes, he's had orbital bones broken twice, and maybe in the end that played a big role in his punch resistance. It's hard to tell, but he looked good early on. He had a good game plan. He was the sharp Kell Brook we know, a great jab to win the opening rounds, sharp counter shots, great size, even though, of course, Terrence Crawford is a very long reach. But the moment Terrence Crawford makes that patented early to mid-fight adjustment,

very Floyd Mayweather-like in that regard, where you take the first couple rounds off, you make it a battle of the footwork, you make it a chess match, but you don't throw much. You take a snapshot of what your opponent is doing, and when you make that adjustment, and for Crawford, it's typically southpaw, the fight either ends or he takes it over. And in this case, it wasn't too long before the fight did end. Crawford's freaking amazing. And I don't want to just brush this off as, you know, old guy Brooke at 34 came in and got demolished the first big-time power shot he ate.

That just seemed to be the way it went in the end because Crawford teased going southpaw a couple times early committed in round three it was still a fairly even bout round but Crawford was eliminating the jab and disarming you know what made Brooke successful in the early going and started to become the aggressor and get off first and land the bigger shots but in the fourth round everything changed that right hand counter shot from the southpaw stance from Crawford, a little bit of a half jab, half hook. Brooke walked right into it as he was coming forward to throw,

and he got hit with a shot at the NC comment. He got effed up. He backed up to the ropes, caught another left hand, never went down. The referee, Tony Weeks, rightfully sort of gave him a standing eight count because the ropes held him up, gave him a knockdown. And as soon as that fight was restarted, Crawford comes in, three-punch combo, right hand, followed by two lefts. Brooks hurt. He's bent over.

Weeks does the right thing to save him. And there you have it, just like that. It was like, wow, we may have a chess match or we may have a decent fight until the fight's over. Terrence Crawford really is that good. Now, you know, you're always going to have haters and critics, and I get really frustrated that Bud's 33 now. And, you know, he fought everybody he could at 140,

and he became the undisputed champion. And it's not like he hasn't looked tremendous against the Jeff Hawns and the, you know, overmatched and washed up Amir Khans and all that. And even after getting surprised last fight against Mean Machine and getting dropped, he just out brawls the brawler. He's absolutely spectacular, Terrence Crawford. When Bob Arum comes on the screen and does the Bob Arum thing and says, you know, I haven't seen a spirit like this since Sugar Ray Leonard

and Tommy Hearns. A lot of times when the Bob father says that, you know, you can, you can get, okay, it's promoter speak. When he says it about Terrence Crawford, it's really hard to question that because what we are seeing is something

spectacular. And no, we're not seeing it against the, a, an a plus level guys, the guys who want to see him against on the PBC side of the street. We're talking about, uh,

Errol Spence, Sean Porter, Danny Garcia, Manny Pacquiao. We're not seeing him against those. on the pvc side of the street we're talking about uh errol spence sean porter danny garcia manny pacquiao we're not seeing him against those i'm hoping this is the last time we have to go through this and i liked seeing the report that did come out late in the week from mike coppinger of the athletic where uh bud's not happy now we had him on this show a short interview late this week and i asked him straight up you know how many more times are we going to go through this where you don't turn to Bob Arum your promoter at top rank and say the hell's going on here like are we going to make these fights happen are we going to go to network pay-per-views and get you in there against Spence what are we doing and he

you know to his credit Crawford did say I've been doing that and now the report coming out from Coppinger is that Crawford had a Pacquiao fight it was supposed to be for this month the money was there they're going to do it in the middle east everyone was going to be happy he was going to finally get that big fight it would have been a unification at welterweight it would have been the kind of you know big test i mean pacquiao's gonna be 41 but you know watch the thurman fight last summer he still got it um and the fight didn't happen because of covid so to see in that story that Bud's very frustrated, that's a good sign.

You don't want him saying the kind of comments he'd said a year ago where, you know, if I don't fight these guys and I retire, it's not going to be a problem for me. I made a lot of money. I know how great I am. Boxing doesn't work like that. You got to make it happen. Credit to him showing you after this win

that he really does want to make it happen. When Bernardo Osuna of ESPN asked Crawford, how do you make the Spence fight? He turned right to Bob Arum. And you know Arum was going to be there in that interview and be close and going to take control of the narrative. And Arum tried. He basically called out Spence, said he doesn't want to fight Crawford. Said, instead of fighting Danny Garcia on December 5th, we'll fight both on the same night and we'll win. Blah, blah, blah,

blah. Um, at least I like that. Bob is doing the whole, they're scared thing to put the pressure back on them. I don't want him to take that angle. Right. And if you're not new to boxing,

this is the public negotiation kind of boxing bullshit we have to go through, but at least he's putting the pressure back on them at the very least. Okay. Uh, I want to see that fight but then to see crawford say come right in that interview say no no i want pacquiao next make it we should have seen that fight three four years ago back when pacquiao was promoted

by bob arum even two years ago and and was fighting on espn there wasn't enough money at the time but crawford wasn't a big enough superstar and with pacquiao at this point it's money that he wants he's not afraid of anybody. I mean, he went in there against Keith Thurman, unbeaten champion, and knocked him down and won a great fight against him. Whether it's the winner of Spence Garcia or it's Manny Pacquiao, you've got to do that next if you're top rank in ESPN at all costs, at all costs that you have, or you're going to lose Terrence Crawford,

whether he chooses to sit out or buy out his contract like Mayweather did to Aaron back in the day or whatever loophole, legal hole, however he can do it, you're going to lose him. So you better, you better get Pacquiao. And whether you have to use money in the Middle East to do that, whatever, you better get that. So I saw a little bit more forcefulness from Bud afterwards,

but there's no more time to waste. As soon as we can get people back in arenas, that's what's got to happen because I don't want to see Bud Crawford go the Golovkin route and end up being 35, 36, 37 years old before he gets those truly defining fights because what you're seeing here is something very special and uh you know you can argue back and you probably will in the comments that you thought uh kell was washed and there were no such thing as little chocolate brownies but i saw a guy who who had what it takes to go in there and test bud to a certain degree this wasn't the best fight

you could have made right now kell was past past his prime, but there was something there. There was something left in that tank. And whatever was in there, Bud absolutely flipped the tank upside down and pissed all over it. And you're seeing a guy who might be the best fighter in the world. I don't know. I'm going to find out when he finally faces an A-plus opponent. But let's make that happen, or you're going to have an unhappy guy.

And rightfully so although bud did take home 4.8 million of a disclosed purse for a non-pay-per-view bout here so uh keep cashing those checks bud crawford still one of the very best in the world uh kelbrook at 34 you know i think he was able to make 147 pounds here because the money was big. He was guaranteed 2 million. It was sort of one more opportunity to go back. I don't think he has to retire if he doesn't want to. I mean, he's been wanting that AmeriCon fight forever. It's still big business in England if they can make it.

But I think you saw a guy with the broken audible bones in separate fights back-to-back against Golovkin when he moved up and dared to be great, and against Spence, punch resistance-wise, not going to be the same guy anymore. So he's almost a stronger version of Amercon in some ways right now, where an elite guy who's going to get in there, they're going to get to him.

They're going to finish the fight. You've got to be really good, though. You've got to be really good to do that. But he can still beat guys. If he wants to cash checks and linger, that's fine. But for Terrence Crawford, we're done. We're done with the best mutants. We're done with the mean machine Cavaliers.

It's all killer, no filler from here on out. We've got to find out how great this guy is, not just by today's means. And, again, it's a crazy era the past year in boxing where you've got four or five, at one point, six guys who had some kind of claim possibly to be pound for pound number one. Usyk right after that Cruiserweight tournament, but now not so much. Lomachenko for a while, but now not so much.

But Spence before the accident, before the close fight with Porter that brought it back down to earth to a degree was right in that discussion. But right now, whether you have have Canelo whether you have Crawford or whether you have a new way number one pound for pound you're right you're you know I mean you're probably right so for me I happen to have Crawford three but I'm telling you again what I saw tonight and I'll package it with the other wins you're watching a special guy a generational guy and uh I'm going by the eye test right now to say that. But, you know, here's to hoping that we definitely get him still in his prime

against all these names of his era. And he can run the gauntlet. He can fight Pacquiao, fight the winner of Spence Garcia, fight who's ever left between Porter and Thurman, you know, fight who's that. Fight them all. Fight them all because uh this post Floyd and Manny Welterweight era and I know Manny's still around and Floyd sometimes is still around it did have the making to be a special one we've got we've got all those names I mentioned five six of

them these are really big names these are really good enduring multi-time champion multi-division champion fighters here and uh you know gun to my head Crawford Spence I have to go Crawford right now and I've been a Spence guy in this discussion for a long time but I have to go Crawford right now I think he is the best of this era uh is he Sugar Ray Leonard Tommy Hearns I you know I can't make that leap Bob did some of it is trying to sell it some of it is he's seen it he's been there uh. But I want to have the opportunity to see the proof that could get me there, that he's that special. And I'm one of the biggest critics against who he hasn't fought. So for tonight, we're not going to focus so much on who you haven't fought. And we're just going to say what I saw there was absolutely brilliant. Bud Crawford is all the things that ESPN hammers

and kicks the dead horse to tell us that he is, but he is that. Is he all-time, though? Let's find that out. Okay, right now, he's the best welterweight in the deep welterweight division. Is he all-time? The proof will be in the put-in, as the great Floyd Mayweather said. Quickly, and of course, we're going to get into all this on a deeper level on Morning Combat on Monday. Any of you that caught the co-main event here on this top rank card right after the University of Florida football game saw just an absolute crap travesty

in that rematch for that 115-pound title with Joshua Franco taking on Andrew Maloney of Australia. Maloney appears to get up high the replays, and it really only took one replay to figure this out, hit him with a jab that caused the right eye of Franco to close because it was from the thumb of the glove, which was still legal. But referee Russell Moore ruling it an accidental headbutt early. So when the ringside doctor rules that Franco's eye can't continue in round three, we hadn't go the four full rounds.

It's either going to be a no contest if it's an accidental headbutt, or hey, in Nevada, we have access to replay. The only caveat is if you go to replay, it ends the fight. Well, the fight's already over. Ringside doctor says Franco can't see anymore. So they go to the replay. They go to the replay for 26 minutes. And the Nevada commission, shockingly or maybe not so shockingly,

because this is boxing, 118-110 for Canelo. Adelaide Bird, right? You know, CJ Ross, 114-114 for Canelo. We've been down these roads before. Bob Bennett, Robert Bird, the replay official, Jay Nady, the ex-referee, you know, the referee and acting replay official there. They're all watching the screen over and over again. All of us are watching the same thing at home.

Shout out to ESPN's truck and technical team for picking this out of the replay. It was a punch. It was a freaking punch, guys. How many more times do you have to watch that? You need Kennedy's brain to explode off on a Dallas sidewalk? Is there a grassy knoll there? What are we doing here? And Nevada rules it an accidental HUD, but no contest.

So I guess we're going to get a third fight between the two of them. Probably we're going to get one anyway because of how weird that Maloney knockout was. But again, that's fighting. You know, you jab somebody with a clean shot and you catch them accidentally with the thumb of the glove at the angle and it's going to swell your eye and they're going to stop the fight. But it should have been a knockout win for Maloney

to avenge a decision loss from earlier this year in what was a really good fight. And we're going to see it again anyway, but boxing has a hard time getting out of its own way with controversial endings, bad scoring, ridiculousness, a lot of shady stuff. This time they implement something that is meant to correct all of that. And they still got it wrong.

And they still took 26 minutes to do it. So, you know, I'm a day one-ish boxing guy. I am boxing. I'm always, you know, Larry Merchant said it, boxing. You can't fix it, you can't kill it. And that's true. All right? merchant said it boxing you can't fix it you can't kill it and that's true all right but i deserve to to be able to be the loudest angry person in the room and be like what are we doing here

you know this is why we can't have nice things you know this is why this shit happens anyway that's the uh fight breakdown for this one uh I love what I saw from Crawford. I love the mid-fight adjustments. He just out-thinks guys, but he's able to pair that ability to out-think, that ability to be long and slick with a true badass, old-school backbone to finish fights. Not just the ability to finish fights, the willingness, the precision, the anger, that streak that goes

through him. He's a bad dude. He don't look to go to the scorecards. Who was the last guy to go to the cards with him? A unification bout at 140 against the guy that just lost to Jose Ramirez. You know the guy I'm talking about. The guy that

knocked out Matisse. You know the guy. The Ukrainian guy. You know the guy I'm talking about. The guy that knocked out Matisse. You know the guy. The Ukrainian guy. You know the guy I'm talking about. And he had knocked that guy down twice early in that fight and completely controlled it. Bud Crawford is great. That's all I got to say. Thank you.

I'm out. I'm out of here. What else do you want me to do? You want me to tell jokes? It's like after midnight. I mean like, you know.