Las Vegas-soon after increasing the weight and winning in the nearest fight of his career, Terenka Crawford-a then on his 37th birthday-was on the jump of two divisions to fight with the unquestionable champion of 168 pounds, Canelo Alvarez. It was 13 months ago. Crawford turned to the audience: his patron, Saudi financier of Arabia’s boxing, Turki Alalshikh.

Even according to boxing standards-I utilize this term, because boxing has only few and dubious standards-it seemed that it was a semi-transparent idea. Alalshikh gave him a look. “But weight?” He said.

In fact, it was more than weight. Both history and common sense are favored not only by a naturally larger person, but a younger and so -called “page”. In combination with Canelo – a leading box of boxing, who already generated almost half a dollars in bags – Crawford was none of these things. What’s more, he would do it without insisting on any of the usual contractual courtesy designed even for the purpose: without a weighing clause, without rehydration clause.

Alalshikh proposed a few very lucrative, though more reasonable, alternatives: Vergil Ortiz Jr. or Jaron “Boots” Ennis, each of them undefeated adolescent stars with great ambition at 154 pounds. Crawford refused to play in any option. “The shoes are not megafight,” he said. “Vergil Ortiz is not megafight. This is the end of my career. They will say,” You were supposed to win. ” I want Canelo Alvarez. “

He wanted a fight he was about to win.

“OK,” said Alalshikh, refraining. “I’ll try to fight for you.”

“This is the fight I want,” said Crawford.

From here, thirteen months Canelo and Crawford will fight on Saturday at the Allegian stadium. Canelo agreed to fight in return for a purse, which is considered to be exceeding $ 100 million (“more”, announced at the Thursday press conference) – an offer that even a leading man could not refuse. But it all started with Crawford. “That’s how we got here,” he says.

The generation of fighters began to look at Canelo less as a rival than the result, jackpot, career payment. It seems that their victories were signed by contracts, not fighting fights. But Crawford looks at Canelo as his white whale, something he persecuted long before this meeting with Alalshikhem: an existential correction on everything that he thinks affected his career, a response to every little return to amateurs, from warriors who would not fight him to promoters, who would not be able to promote him, the source of eternal respect and rewind. But if he wins.

In fact, Crawford has been studying Canelo since at least 2015, when he appeared in Mandalay Bay to see how Alvarez defeated the future of Hall of Famer, Miguel Cotto, for his first title in medium weight. For comparison, Crawford has maintained the title WBO Junior Welter Wweight. “I didn’t think that the fight against Canelo would be something,” he says. “We were too far in weight classes.”

Gradually, however, this would happen. In 2021, Crawford-at that time, a welterweight master, although there is a desperate lacked opponents, ”Alvarez said in the fight with someone named Avni Yildirim in Miami. Canelo, currently the 168-Funt WBC champion, knocked out Yildirim in the third round. But even as he did, the grain was planted. Crawford would not mention it in public, but it was in his mind.

However, by 2023 he began a behind -the -scene campaign to land in the fight against Canelo. At the end of this year he met with the then president of WBO Francisco “Paco” Valcarcel in Puerto Rico and moved this idea.

“I was shocked,” recalls Valcarcel. While Crawford defeated Errola Spence Jr. that he would not have been in question in 147 pounds, Canelo – who has already won the title of world champion in cocato in 175 – he was unquestioned in 168. “Why don’t you wait a few years?” Valcarcel announced gently.

“Waiting,” Crawford appointed, citing his age. “I can beat him.”

Until now, Crawford regularly performed in the Kanelo fighting struggle, and the victory of Canelo on Jermell Charlo was still fresh in his mind. Charlo, who appeared from 154 pounds, was dropped in round 7. Then it was all she painted. “He didn’t fight for winning,” says Crawford of Charlo. “He just fought for survival.”

In many respects, Canelo-Charlo has become a too celebrated template in Alvarez’s career curve: a single knocking, which predictively predictably a unanimous decision. This was the case with Canelo’s victories with such as John Ryder, Jaime Munguia and Edgar Berlanga.

“They wanted to pay,” Crawford tells me. “They didn’t want to win the fight. The output of 12 rounds was a victory for them.”

If Canelo’s latest victory – for whom Crawford traveled up to Riyjad in Saudi Arabia – there was even a lack of knocking down pro forma, his opponent, William Scull, he didn’t mean anything that survival. Meanwhile, Crawford fights only to destroy himself.

To say, if it is candid to judge Canelo based on previous performances, what about Crawford? His last fight, transfer to 154 and winning, if the unanimous decision about the respectable Israil Madrymov was not in the Canelo case.

“Madrimov taught me patience,” says Crawford. “He was so Herky-Jerky and so explosive,” back there, all these crazy fools. But Canelo doesn’t have it in her arsenal. I don’t have to worry about it. “

What about age? Alvarez is 35 years elderly. Crawford has two weeks from his 38th birthday, elderly according to the standards of any division in each era, and certainly is not the optimal time to jump over many divisions. On the other hand, Alvarez fought at least 520 rounds (maybe more, because it is believed that there are several early fights that have never reached the records) as a professional. He had two competitive fights with the hardly striking Genadiy Golovkin and losses from Floyd Mayweather, and recently Dmitry Bivol. For his part, Crawford was never beaten or beaten in 245 rounds. Who is older in boxing years? I’m wondering.

“It’s for sure,” says Crawford. “He began to fight a professional at the age of 15.”

Despite this, Alvarez remains not only the “party”, but for the economy. Given that the fight takes place at the weekend of Mexico Independence, it will certainly be a pro-channel crowd, but what’s more, Canelo will be the alleged beneficiary of any doubts about the results of the judges. Crawford doesn’t agree. He knows that he cannot fight a typical fight, which includes a relatively leisurely beginning when he draws his opponent’s tendencies. He must start quickly.

“Of course,” he says. “I have to give a tone. You need to give a tone from Canelo – to inform the judges that you put the rounds into the bank. I look at it: one round at once. I do not go in and try a knockout in the first round. Just put rounds in the bank. And make sure you win these rounds decisively.”

The way Crawford explains this – the way he explains it for years – makes his existential matter, well, is completely reasonable. Maybe in this way you hunt for white whales, even those with red hair, when the only thing you want is what you should not have.