Terence Crawford has choice words for the WBC.
On Wednesday, new broke that Crawford had been stripped of his WBC super middleweight title for not paying their proposed sanctioning fees with regard to his title bout with Canelo Alvarez. In response, Crawford took to social media Wednesday afternoon, ripping WBC president, Mauricio Sulaiman for the action.
“Mauricio got a lot to say about me not paying him $300,000 plus another $100K-something for a sanctioning fee,” Crawford said on his Instagram.. Then he’s gonna tell me I need to apologize. Who the f*ck you think I am? Boy, you better slap your f*cking self. I ain’t paying your ass, shit. What the f*ck you talking about, pay you $300,000. What makes you so motherf*cking better than any other sanctioning body? Answer that question.
“Everybody accepted what I was giving them. The WBC think that you better than everybody, and you’ve got the f*cking green belt, which don’t mean f*cking shit. You want me to pay you more than the other sanctioning bodies because you feel like you’re better than them. You can take the f*cking belt. It’s a trophy anyway! What the f*ck am I paying you every time I step foot in the f*cking ring? I’m the motherf*cker that’s putting my life on the line, not you! You ain’t stepping your motherf*cking ass in that ring. Why should I have to pay to carry your belt? You should be paying me!”
Sanctioning fees are standard practice in boxing, where the sanctioning body takes a percentage of the purse. Three percent is a standard fee, though fighters can negotiate lower fees with sanctioning bodies. For Crawford, three percent on his $50M purse would equate to $1.5M, however, the WBC agreed to drop the fee to only .6 percent, resulting in the $300,000 figure Crawford cited. The unified champion was still unwilling to pay that, resulting in the WBC stripping him.
But Crawford thinks there’s something else at play here.
“Mauricio, everybody in the world knows you were going for Canelo,” Crawford said. “You was mad that I beat Canelo. It’s OK. It happens. Say congratulations, instead of having that little smirk on your face, all mad and pouting. You should’ve took the money, and you should have been thankful and grateful that I was rocking your belt around as your champion. But you wanted to make it about you.
“Oh well, you stripped me. I’ve been stripped before. It doesn’t matter. I’m still considered the undisputed champion. I’m still the champion in the division. How you love that? You’re not for these fighters. You’re probably worse than the promoters.”
And then Crawford issued a statement to Turki Alalshikh, who footed the bill for the Crawford vs. Canelo super fight earlier this year. Alalshikh and UFC CEO Dana White are working together on a new boxing league, and Crawford showed his support for a change in how things are done in boxing.
“Turki, I hope y’all get that done,” Crawford said. “I hope y’all get that done so we can all see people like this guy go away from boxing, because they ruin the sport. They’ve got they ranking systems when people be mandatories for year, like [David] Benavidez, they don’t strip these fighters. The WBC, you ain’t never see them strip Canelo for Benavidez. He was what, mandatory for like two years? It’s crazy. That’s that favoritism shit.
“I’m still the champion. Can’t take that away from me. History already been made, baby. I am legend.”