{"id":481333,"date":"2026-02-17T19:33:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T19:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/481333\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T19:33:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T19:33:07","slug":"terence-crawford-admits-one-rivals-punch-made-his-body-go-stiff-he-hit-me-the-hardest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/481333\/","title":{"rendered":"Terence Crawford admits one rival’s punch made his body go stiff: “He hit me the hardest”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Terence Crawford<\/a> gave an unexpected response when asked to name the fighter who hit him the hardest, causing one side of his body to stiffen.<\/p>\n

The former five-division world champion faced a selection of elite punchers, including Canelo Alvarez<\/a> and Errol Spence Jr<\/a>, before calling time on his illustrious career last year.<\/p>\n

Despite the one-sided nature of their showdown in 2023, Spence was considered a heavy-handed operator at 147lbs, having ended 22 of his 28 professional victories inside the distance.<\/p>\n

The same, of course, could be said for Canelo, who had demonstrated his world-class power in multiple weight divisions prior to facing Crawford last September.<\/p>\n

But Crawford, while contending with a size disadvantage at 168lbs, was nonetheless able to unanimously outpoint the Mexican and become a three-division undisputed champion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Along with Spence and Canelo, the unbeaten American also faced dangerous puncher Egidijus Kavaliauskas, who arguably scored a knockdown \u2013 which was ruled a slip \u2013 during their welterweight encounter in 2019.<\/p>\n

It was down at 135lbs, though, where Crawford believes he was hit the hardest, against Olympic champion Yuriorkis Gamboa in 2014.<\/p>\n

The Cuban entered their clash as a former world featherweight champion, but nonetheless punched with enough authority to inspire an urgent response from \u2018Bud\u2019.<\/p>\n

For that reason, Crawford insisted on FULL SEND PODCAST<\/a> that Gamboa, on a pound-for-pound metric, was the biggest puncher he faced as a professional.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s got to be Gamboa. He caught me off-guard, coming in with my hands down \u2013 being cocky \u2013 and he just caught me to [an extent that] one side of my body got stiff.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like \u2018boom\u2019 \u2013 he shocked me. I was like, \u2018Damn, now I gotta get him out of there\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having been forced to go through the gears, Crawford scored four knockdowns en route to a ninth-round stoppage victory over Gamboa<\/a>, successfully defending his WBO world title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Terence Crawford gave an unexpected response when asked to name the fighter who hit him the hardest, causing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-481333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}