That’s all for tonight. You can read the full report from tonight’s fight here. Thanks as always for following along with us.
Khan: 'I would never quit'
“I would never quit,” Khan says after arriving to the press conference about five minutes after Crawford, his face badly marked up. “I would rather get knocked out. I one of them fights who’d rather get knocked out in fights. I have been knocked out because I’ve tried to win fights–”
“You didn’t quit?” Crawford interrupts. “Tell the truth.”
Khan: “I didn’t quit.”
Crawford: “So what happened?”
Khan: “I’m telling you I’ve never quit.”
Crawford: “What happened?”
Khan: “I was hit with a low shot, man. I was hit with a very low blow.”
Crawford: “In your leg? You quit with a shot in your leg?”
Khan: “In the leg? It was in the balls!”
It devolved from there as Khan spent the next 10 minutes in a defensive crouch over the ending.
“If you guys think I quit, I’ve never quit from a fight,” Khan says. “One hundred percent. Look, he’s a great fighter, he beat me tonight and we just have to move on from here.”
Terence Crawford first to arrive to the post-fight press conference shortly after 1am local time. He doesn’t mince words in his assessment of the finish, saying that he believes Khan was looking for a way out.
“I seen Amir Khan’s face, and he was shaking his head and I was getting disappointed the whole because I knew that he was looking for a way out,” Crawford says. “Not the way that I would have liked to finish the fight. But Virgil is in his corner for a reason and that’s to look out for his fighter. He felt that his fighter didn’t want to fight anymore so he stopped the fight.”
“I could tell I was breaking him down,” Crawford says. “It was just a matter of time. I just took my time. I was disappointed the corner stopped the fight in that manner, but Virgil is a great coach, and he was looking out for his fighter. I know he didn’t want to go out like that.”
Crawford says he wasn’t discomposed by Khan’s much-lauded hand speed (“Benavidez and Gamboa were 10 times faster than him”) and says that he’d like to fight Errol Spence Jr next: “The fight I want next is Errol Spence. Whenever he is ready, he can come and get it.”
Of course that could be difficult politically with Spence aligned with Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions. Enter Top Rank chairman Bob Arum, who took the microphone in the ring after Crawford spoke and called on the crowd to boycott Haymon’s fights until they make Crawford v Spence.
“We want to fight Errol Spence,” Arum says. “Everyone wants the fight. There is one guy stopping it and that is Al Haymon.”
Terence Crawford wins by TKO after low blow!
Round 6
Khan is struck clearly below the belt by Crawford early in the sixth. The replay shown in the ring confirms it. But now the referee has waved it off! The fight is over! Terence Crawford has retained his title by a TKO at the 0:47 mark of round six. It was ruled an accidental blow by referee David Fields and Khan would have been given five minutes to recover, but instead Khan’s corner informed the ref that he won’t be able to continue. Maybe he was looking for a way out the way things were headed.
Round 5
Crawford looks like the bigger fighter in there. He lands a left followed by an uppercut and Khan is no longer bouncing on the balls of his feet. He’s being broken down by an opponent of a higher caliber. His legs are screaming. Crawford, who’s switched back to southpaw, lands another big left. Khan does land a few nice left-hand leads toward the end of the round that get Crawford’s attention, but it’s not enough to take the round on our card.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Crawford 10-9 Khan (Crawford 49-45 Khan)
Round 4
Crawford lands a left hook. Then he cracks Khan with a counter right and Khan is hurt. Now Crawford steps forward and commits to the body, backing Khan up with a series of thudding shots to the ribs. He’s in complete control. Khan is in serious trouble in the final minute of the round and Crawford stalks him, pounding away with vicious shots to the body. An easy round for the American.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Crawford 10-9 Khan (Crawford 39-36 Khan)
Round 3
Khan lands a sharp right hand to open the third. Crawford switches to a southpaw stance, where he’s been so good defensively over his career. Khan’s hand speed and length are serving him well here as he’s scoring and taking advantage of Crawford’s deliberate approach. Khan did enough to win the round, but there’s the gnawing sense that Crawford is simply waiting patiently for the opening to close the show.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Crawford 9-10 Khan (Crawford 29-27 Khan)
Round 2
Crawford typically needs a few rounds to take his man’s measure and figure out where to put the counterpunches. He needed barely two minutes tonight. Khan is far more defensive in the second (unsurprisingly) but not doing the best job of measuring distance, jabbing from inside the pocket. Crawford looking more annoyed than anything, looking for openings to land those counters. Khan hasn’t done much this round but lunges in with a lead left hook that lands flush upstairs but Crawford takes it well. A closer round but Crawford landed the bigger shots.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Crawford 10-9 Khan (Crawford 20-17 Khan)
Khan down in round one!
Round 1
Chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” ring through the lower bowl as the opening bell rings. Certainly a feeling-out round for both as they circle one another in the center of the ring. Khan lands a couple of jabs. Then a couple of more. Very little from Crawford. And suddenly Crawford catches Khan coming in with counter right and Khan is down in a heap with a minute to go. Out of nowhere! And Crawford is pouring it on and nearly puts Khan down a second time in the closing seconds. Oh dear. He’s out to make a statement. This could be a short night.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Crawford 10-8 Khan (Crawford 10-8 Khan)
Updated
The fighters have been announced. They’re getting their final instructions from the referee. The seconds are out. We’ll pick it up with round-by-round commentary from here!
The fighters are making their entrances. First it’s Khan, making his way to the ring in a white robe with red trim as Eminem’s Not Afraid plays at ear-splitting volumes. Now it’s Crawford, the three-weight champion and runaway favorite, striding confidently from the tunnel in a white robe with gold trim to Jay Z’s Encore.
And Teófimo López has scored a body-shot knockout in the fifth round against Edis Tatli. The stylish Brooklyn lightweight punctuates the victory with his trademark backflip. It’s López’s fifth fight at the Garden and all five have ended inside the distance. Afterward he calls out Richard Commey, the Ghanaian who holds the IBF title at 135lbs (and who happens to be in the building tonight).
“I didn’t have the best camp, but I did what I needed to do and came out victorious,” López says. “I want a world title shot next. That’s what I want. We promised to take over the show, and once again, I took it over.”
He adds: “I’m ready for Richard Commey or the WBC title (held by Mikey Garcia). As long as it’s for a title, I am ready to go. No one can take my power.”
A KO, a @KingJames celebration and a backflip. No one is more entertaining than @TeofimoLopez #TheTakeover #CrawfordKhan pic.twitter.com/n8JWB3BRAq
— Top Rank Boxing (@trboxing) April 21, 2019
Next up: Terence Crawford v Amir Khan for the WBO welterweight championship.
Updated
Stevenson has cruised to a 10-round decision by scores of 100-90, 99-91 and 98-92. Frankly, it might not have even been that close. The 21-year-old from Newark improves to 11-0 with six knockouts, picks up a couple of secondary titles and moves up the rankings in a talent-stacked featherweight division including names like Gary Russell Jr, Oscar Valdez, Leo Santa Cruz and the Leeds man Josh Warrington, the IBF titleholder whom Stevenson called out by name. The 2016 Olympic silver medalist is all smiles during his in-ring interview, calling himself the “next Floyd” in a remark that quickly (and somewhat amusingly) prompts a chorus of boos from the nearly full Madison Square Garden crowd.
Now it’s another 2016 Olympian – the unbeaten rising lightweight star Teófimo López – against Finland’s Edis Tatli in the final preliminary fight ahead of the main event.
Updated
Shakur Stevenson is cruising against Christopher Diaz in their featherweight bout. He’s won the first eight rounds widely on the Guardian’s unofficial card, outthrowing and outlanding his opponent to the head and body, at times making Diaz look like an amateur with his hand speed. Stevenson has landed more than twice as many blows as his opponent according to CompuBox’s punch statistics, including 38 jabs to Diaz’s four.
Amir Khan has arrived at the Garden ahead of his 10th world title fight and perhaps the toughest of them all. The inestimable Donald McRae spoke with Khan, who acknowledges he’s putting his future on the line.
“I have been fighting for many years and I need this kind of contest to lift me,” Khan says of his WBO world welterweight title bout against Crawford. “It’s a fight to keep me in the sport, to give me the love for it. I believe I can win but everyone thinks all the odds are against me. He’s unbeaten but this is what I need. This is a fight that can make me a world champion again and I feel that God has given me this chance. Beating Crawford will transform my career. You need these fights which make you a little nervous.”
Updated
Preamble
Hello and welcome to New York for tonight’s welterweight title fight between Terence Crawford and Amir Khan. We’re ringside at Madison Square Garden with a little more than an hour until a main event that pitches Khan, the 2004 Olympic silver medalist from Bolton, againstCrawford, the WBO champion at 147lbs widely regarded as one of the two best pound-for-pound fighters in the world along with Vasiliy Lomachenko.
We’re still in the undercard here at the Garden with Shakur Stevenson (10-0, 6 KOs), who win a silver medal for the United States at the Rio Olympics, having just climbed through to ropes to face Puerto Rico’s Christopher Diaz (24-1, 16 KOs) in a 10-round featherweight bout. Next Teófimo López (12-0, 10 KOs), the rising lightweight sensation from Brooklyn, will face Finland’s Edis Tatli (31-2, 10 KOs) in a scheduled 12-round scrap.
And then it’s Crawford and Khan. Plenty more to come between now and then.
Updated
Bryan will be here shortly. In the meantime here’s his look ahead to tonight’s main event at Madison Square Garden.
