Clad in a tuxedo, Crawford stepped on stage at Cipriani 25 Broadway in New York to accept the annual honor for the first time in his career from Ring Magazine.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess I did pay the cost to be the boss,\u201d Crawford said with a smile. \u201cWhat a way to end your career. Anything is possible if you believe in yourself.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It came as somewhat of a surprise when Crawford announced his retirement in December<\/a>. Crawford was entertaining the idea of a middleweight run to become a six-division champion, while Canelo Alvarez<\/a>, the superstar he conquered in September, was inclined for a sequel once recovered from surgery and healthy again this fall.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Crawford left boxing, retiring as an unbeaten undisputed super middleweight champion and the pound-for-pound king.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people keep asking me why I retired,\u201d said Crawford.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI’ve been doing this sport since I was seven years old. I retired at 38. Ask yourself: if you’ve been taking your body through hell for 30 years, would you retire? That’s why I retired. There is nothing else left for me to accomplish in the sport of boxing. I gave my all to boxing, but I’m not going to give my health to boxing.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf I were to come back, who would I fight? I have nobody to fight and nothing to accomplish. That would mean that I am just coming back for the sport, and money. I never fought for money. I fought for legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In a move seemingly stamping the decision that his fighting days are done, Crawford had a lavish retirement party in Nebraska last month with family and friends.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI’m taking the time to travel the world and spend time with my family,\u201d said Crawford. \u201cI’m not worried about anything right now. I said I was going to take a year off, just to do that, and then think about what to do next. But for now, I’m just relaxing.<\/p>\n \u201cI’m going to miss the competitiveness. I’m a competitor and like to compete, to be the best in everything I do. At the same time, I’m going to appreciate not waking up early and taking my body through hell.<\/p>\n \u201cWhether or not I got my flowers or not, I’m respected and everyone knows that the legacy of Terence Crawford is real. The things that I accomplished in the sport of boxing are going to be hard to top.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Manouk Akopyan is The Ring\u2019s lead writer. Follow him on X and Instagram: @ManoukAkopyan. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Clad in a tuxedo, Crawford stepped on stage at Cipriani 25 Broadway in New York to accept the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[59273,233,2560,151516,6102,101,6826,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-406819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-object-object","tag-article","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-articles","tag-boxing-news","tag-sports","tag-the-ring","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}