Terence Crawford produced a performance to remember when he defeated Canelo Alvarez, but one former world champion believes he’d have been able to go one better and stop the Mexican superstar.
Crawford and Canelo collided in a mega-fight back in September 2025, with ‘Bud’ moving up two weight divisions from 154lbs to 168lbs for the showdown.
Due to that fact, many fans believed the jump in weight would be too much for Crawford, but he proved the doubters wrong as he claimed the unanimous decision win over Canelo to become undisputed super-middleweight champion.
Despite that success, another fighter that once reigned in the super-middleweight division thinks he would have done an even better job than ‘Bud’ by getting Canelo out of there inside the distance.
That man is James Toney, who shared his thoughts on Crawford’s performance whilst speaking to FightHype.
“He looked good, alright, but it wasn’t no James Toney performance, you know that. Every time that I fought on the big stage, [Iran] Barkley, [Evander] Holyfield, John Ruiz and countless others – I am dominating them.
Terence Crawford, I love Terence Crawford, but he doesn’t even do what I did. He didn’t do it, but he won 12 rounds. I did damage, I stopped people, I knocked people out, that is why they called me ‘Lights Out’.”
Hall of Famer Toney became IBF super middleweight world champion in February 1993 with a stoppage win over Iran Barkley, and in three defences of the belt, he recorded further knockouts against Tim Littles and Charles Williams.
Three-division world champion Toney finished his career with 77 wins from 92 fights, 47 of those by knockout, giving him a KO% of just over 61%, which is actually lower than the 73% KO ratio that Crawford ended with when he hung up his gloves last year.
