Will Crawford risk an inheritance for a Canelo Payday? Murtazaliyev, Bohachuk The variants

Canelo Alvarez's decision to begin negotiations with William Scull on January 10th for a potential fight in May puts Terence Crawford in a precarious position.

Four-division world champion Crawford was hoping to be the next opponent for unified super middleweight champion Canelo (62-2-2, 39 KOs), but it looks like he won't be getting that mega-money fight.

Crawford's options

Terence, 37, will now have to start thinking about fighting someone else to keep him busy while he waits. He hopes Canelo will pay him in September. I don't know if he will then, but you can see why Crawford would believe it would happen.

If Crawford doesn't retire, these would be his best options for inheritance and money:

– Sebastian Fundora
– Jayron “The Boots” Ennis
– Tim Tzu
– Sergey Bokhachuk
– Bahram Murtazaliyev

Fundora will be busy with his expected title defense against Errol Spence and likely won't be available until the second half of 2025. So if Crawford wants to fight him, he'll have to stay on the shelf for extra time.

He was already out of action after his narrow win over Israil Madrimov on August 3. We probably think Crawford will be out of the ring for about a year and a half if he chooses to wait for the Fundora match. It's not the smartest thing Crawford could do, but if he doesn't want to risk being beaten by Murtazaliev, Bohachuk, Tszyu or Ennis, it's understandable why he would choose to wait.

Most of those fights will require Turki Al-Shiekh to bankroll them for Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs) to be ready to face any of these guys. He's not a PPV guy for one of the promoters to be willing to give him a huge guaranteed purse and hope the match sells out.

As we saw in Terence's last event against Israil Madrimov, he is not a PPV attraction. That's why Turki needs to step in so Crawford can fight dangerous fighters at 154, like Murtazaliev or Bohachuk. Those would have been tough fights for Crawford even if he was young, but now that he's nearing 40, those fights would be nightmares for him.

Undisputed at 154?

If Crawford was bravehe will face IBF 154-lb champion Murtazaliev (23-0, 17 KOs) in a unification bout to put himself in position to face Fundora for the undisputed title in the second half of 2025.

If Terence can get the IBF belt, he can pressure Fundora into fighting him. Becoming the undisputed junior middleweight champion would raise Crawford's stock in the boxing world, which could help him get the Canelo fight.

It is still not certain that Bud will get the fight because, as we saw earlier, Canelo cannot be forced to fight. He can ignore Crawford for the rest of his career, like he did with David Benavidez, and won't lose sleep over the criticism he receives from fans.