That’s all from Madison Square Garden. Thanks as always for following along with us and be sure to check our full fight report.
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Crawford connected with 89 of 247 punches (36%), compared to 47 of 411 for Lundy (22%). The champion was particularly effective with the jab, landing eight per round – more than double the division average.
“Lundy came out very strong,” Crawford says. “He had a good rhythm and good timing. I was surprised he came out so strongly. It took me a while to figure him out because he was strongly initially in the fight. Once I got his rhythm and timing down I was able to hit him with some really hard shots.”
Terence Crawford wins by fifth-round TKO!
A fight breaks out in the crowd, briefly commanding the attention of the audience. Crawford rocks with Lundy with a left hand and Lundy is hurt! He’s backed up against the ropes as Crawford opens up and ultimately crashes to the canvas. Makes it to his feet and the referee Steve Willis gives him a serious look before allowing the fight to continue. Within seconds he puts a stop to it at 2:09 of the fifth.
WATCH the first knockdown in round five that setup @budcrawford402's TKO victory. #TweetReplay #CrawfordLundy https://t.co/R9UutuJeOx
— HBOboxing (@HBOboxing) February 28, 2016
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Round 4
The term “technical fight” can sound like homework for certain boxing fans, but this fight is that and it’s been quite entertaining so far. Crawford is really dealing now, keeping Lundy at bay with a commanding right jab. Still, even as the champion comes on strong, Lundy continues to give a good accounting of himself.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Crawford 10-9 Lundy (Crawford 39-37 Lundy)
Round 3
My thinking entering tonight’s fight was Lundy would have early success because of his speed, but Crawford would ultimately figure out his patterns and the challenger would be unable to adapt. That may be what’s happening already as Crawford begins to enjoy more success, beginning to control distance and timing. Another round to Crawford.
Lundy WILL take chances. Lundy WILL go out on shield. Size, power, speed, reach, everything against him...BUT NO QUIT.
— Lou DiBella (@loudibella) February 28, 2016
Guardian’s unofficial score: Crawford 10-9 Lundy (Crawford 29-28 Lundy)
Round 2
Better head movement here from Crawford, who hasn’t quite solved the distance but is doing better work with the jab now that he’s sticking to the southpaw stance. Lundy doing excellent work so far – lots of in-and-out movement to keep Crawford off balance – but you wonder if he can sustain this frenetic pace for another 10 rounds. Closer round, this one to Crawford.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Crawford 10-9 Lundy (Crawford 19-19 Lundy)
Round 1
And we’re off. Lundy in blue trunks with silver trim, Crawford technically wearing blue trunks with black trim, but they’re largely patterned after what appears to be the Omaha skyline. The switch-hitting Crawford comes out in an orthodox stance. Lundy connects with a series of jabs and straights upstairs. Crawford briefly switches to southpaw, then back to orthodox. A big round for Lundy, who is making Crawford miss a lot.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Crawford 9-10 Lundy
Lundy is much closer to home, but it’s very much a Crawford crowd. Lots of boos for the challenger as he’s announced, which quickly turn to cheers for the champion from the sellout crowd of 5,092. Not much longer now.
The fighters are making their ringwalks. First it’s the challenger Hank Lundy, who is from South Philadelphia. He enters to Monster by Meek Mill, who is from North Philadelphia. Next it’s Crawford, the champion, who comes out to We Right Here by DMX.
Felix Verdejo wins by unanimous decision in co-main event
The official scores are in and Verdejo has won a unanimous decision to improve to 20-0. Two ringside judges turned in cards of 100-90 with a third scoring it 99-91. (The Guardian had it 110-90.)
It wasn’t an eventful fight and it won’t do much to advance Verdejo’s star, but it was a mostly commanding performance against a limited opponent by a fighter of no small promise.
Verdejo probably not making many new fans tonight. The Guardian has him ahead 90-81 entering the last round, but he’s had trouble chasing the elusive Silva down and is largely playing it safe. Scattered boos could be heard over the last few rounds, most audibly in the eighth. We’ll see if he opens up more here in the final frame.
Verdejo is currently pitching a shutout against Silva through six rounds. Wonder if he’ll start opening up a bit more in the later rounds. Certainly wouldn’t hurt to close the show in style in his second HBO appearance.
As the main event draws closer, here’s a look at what the folks at CompuBox came up with in their analysis.
Deliberate at First, Destructive at End: In his two fights at 140 Crawford spent round one surveying his quarry as he threw just 34 against (Thomas) Dulorme and 38 against (Dierry) Jean. But while his sputtering start continued for several more rounds against Dulorme, Crawford shifted into high gear by scoring a knockdown in the waning seconds of the first, then continuing the wave in round twoby going 15 of 50 overall to Jean’s 4 of 32. From there, Crawford used his jab to dissect Jean (32.6 thrown/8.6 connects per round, the latter figure nearly doubling the 4.8 junior welterweight average), his switch-hitting tactics to confuse the Canadian-based Haitian and his overall ring generalship to keep Jean under control while steadily widening his numerical advantages. Jean only reached double-digit connects once (10 in round six) and in rounds 7-10 Crawford prevailed 73-12 overall, 32-1 jabs and 41-11 power and recorded knockdowns in rounds nine and 10 to finish the job. In the end Crawford led 169-51 overall, 86-12 jabs and 83-39 power as well as (32%-15% overall, 26%-7% jabs and 40%-25% power). Crawford’s last 5 opponents (Jean, Dulorme, Beltran Gamboa & Burns landed just 19% of their total punches, while Bud landed 32%, producing a +13 rating, good for a #7 spot on CompuBox’s Plus/Minus list. Crawford opponents landed just 7.3 total punches per round, #4 on CompuBox Categorical Leaders list. Crawford’s 7.4 landed jabs per round also ranks #4 on CompuBox Categorical Leaders list. Like Whitaker at Norfolk’s Scope, Crawford at Omaha’s CenturyLink is nearly unbeatable. Can he carry that into MSG?
Crawford and Lundy both made the weight at yesterday’s weigh-in. The champion came in at 139.2lbs, eight-tenths of a pound under the junior welterweight limit. The challenger weighed 138.2.
Verdejo and Willian are underway in the co-main event. Despite Willian’s unbeaten record, this is very much a showcase bout for Verdejo, a stud of a prospect whom Top Rank is grooming as the successor to Miguel Cotto and Felix Trinidad – the latest in the long line of Puerto Rican greats.
Good evening and welcome to fight night at the Theater at Madison Square Garden! A sold-out crowd of 5,092 is on hand to watch Terence Crawford defend his WBO junior middleweight title against Hank Lundy. Before that main course, it’s an appetizer featuring much-fancied Puerto Rican prospect Felix Verdejo and Willian Silva in a 10-round featherweight tilt. Both are being televised nationally on HBO.
Verjedo and Silva should be making their ringwalks shortly. Here’s a look at the early results from tonight’s undercard.
- Julian Rodriguez vs. King Daluz (eight rounds, super lightweight)
- Jean Carlos Torres TKO 3 Miguel Gloria (four rounds, lightweight)
- Christopher Diaz KO 4 Angel Luna (eight rounds, featherweight)
- Seanie Monaghan TKO 5 Janne Forsman (10 rounds, light heavyweight)
- Emanuel Taylor KO 6 Wilfredo Acuna (eight rounds, super lightweight)
Bryan will be here shortly. In the meantime why not have a read of his lookahead to tonight’s main event.
He wasn’t the first or third or even fifth choice for Crawford, who is unbeaten in 27 professional bouts and widely regarded as presumptive successor to Floyd Mayweather as America’s next pay-per-view star. An entire platoon of the 140lb division’s uppermost names passed on the invitation to face him, among them WBC titleholder Viktor Postol, Ruslan Provodnikov, Lucas Matthysse, Mauricio Herrera and even Manny Pacquiao, who opted for known quantity Timothy Bradley over the young lion from his own promotional stable. Oddsmakers have priced Lundy as a 10-1 longshot, lending the occasion of the champion’s New York City debut the subdued feel of a stay-busy fight. Not that it concerns the Omaha native.
“I’m a fighter,” he said. “I’m not a promoter and I’m not a manager so I leave that up to my manager and my promoter and I just fight.”
And how. The slight, sinewy Crawford is a highly intelligent and complete operator, dependent on no one attribute. The tactical aptitude and mental dexterity that sets him apart – a preternatural sense of timing and distance, an uncanny ability to adjust to an opponent throughout a fight and create or change his game plan as needed – might not evoke the primal fear of a Gennady Golovkin or a Sergey Kovalev, other popular claimants to Mayweather’s vacancy atop boxing’s pound-for-pound pecking order. But a scalpel can finish you just as decisively as a hammer.
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