Terence Crawford is going scorched earth on World Boxing Council (WBC) and its head Mauricio Sulaiman after they stripped him of their super middleweight title following his big win over Saul “Canelo” Alvarez back in September.
Sulaiman put out a video alongside the news of Crawford being stripped, accusing the boxer of refusing to pay over a quarter of a million dollars in sanctioning fees.
“Mauricio got a lot to say about me not paying him $300,000 plus another $100k [or] something for sanction fees, right?” Crawford said in an Instagram video. “Apologize? Like who the f—k you think I am? Boy, you better slap your f—king self, I ain’t paying your ass —t.”
“F—k you talking about pay you $300,000. What makes you so motherf—king better than any other sanctioning bodies? Answer that question. What makes you better than WBO, the IBF or the WBA? Everybody accepted what I was giving them. But you, the WBC, think that you better than everybody, don’t you? You got the f—king green belt, which don’t mean f—king s—t. The f—king real belt is the Ring belt which is free, motherf—ker.”
“You want me to pay you more than the other sanction bodies because you feel like you better than them,” Crawford continued. “How in the world all the sanction bodies agreed to the same amount, but you sit your motherf—king ass up there and say that I need to apologize to you. The f—k? You can take the f—king belt. It’s a trophy anyway. The f—k am I paying you every time I step foot in the f—king ring?”
“F—king wear down as the years pass. That don’t even make sense. I’m the motherf—ker that’s put my life on the line. Not you. You ain’t stepping your motherf—king ass in that ring. You or nobody else. So why should I have to pay to carry your belt? You should be paying me!”
This all comes at a time where boxing is getting a potential overhaul in the United States with the Muhammad Ali Boxing Revival Act. That bill, put together by UFC parent company TKO, will allow TKO’s new boxing entity with Turki Alalshikh to run a promotion the same way as UFC — and part of the appeal there is it cuts out the alphabet soup belts and sanctioning bodies.
“Turki, I hope y’all get that done, man,” Crawford said. “I hope y’all get that done so people like this guy go away from boxing, because they ruin the sport with all these antics that they do.”
While we’re no fans of the Ali Revival Act, situations like this remind everyone that the current system has massive flaws as well.
