“Say my name,” Crawford said during the rant. “Say I knock Terence Crawford out.”
Crawford also insisted Ennis and his team avoided him earlier in his career because they believed he was not ready yet.
“I would have ended Boots’ career before it started,” said Crawford in the clip. “It’s a reason why he went the other way. Stop playing with me.”
“He wasn’t ready yet. He needed a couple of more fights, they said. I be trying to play nice because I support the young fellow and all that.”
The exchange revived a long-running debate among boxing fans about why the fight never happened when Crawford held the welterweight titles, and Ennis was rising through the rankings as one of the division’s most dangerous younger contenders.
During that period, Crawford was focused on becoming undisputed champion against Errol Spence Jr. before later moving into bigger fights at junior middleweight and eventually super middleweight against Canelo Alvarez. Ennis remained at welterweight, where many fans believed he was avoided because of his athleticism, power, and aggressive style.
Crawford retired after defeating Canelo in 2025 at 168 pounds, while Ennis is now fighting at junior middleweight and preparing for a June 27 bout against unified champion Xander Zayas in Brooklyn. The weight difference has become part of the debate as well because Crawford would likely need to drop 14 pounds at age 38 for the fight to realistically happen.
“Clowns dog. Y’all say and do anything,” Ennis posted online afterward. “We locked in June 27th, two-time unified champ loading.”
Ennis is currently positioned as one of Matchroom and DAZN’s key younger stars, while Crawford spent much of the latter stage of his career operating outside traditional promotional structures. Those business realities also played a role in why the matchup never moved beyond discussion stages.
The Crawford talk could disappear quickly if Ennis loses to Zayas on June 27, but the clip still reignited interest in one of the biggest unanswered fights from the welterweight era because Crawford sounded far from relaxed about the subject despite being retired.
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