Terence Crawford gave an unexpected response when asked to name the fighter who hit him the hardest, causing one side of his body to stiffen.
The former five-division world champion faced a selection of elite punchers, including Canelo Alvarez and Errol Spence Jr, before calling time on his illustrious career last year.
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.
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.
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.
Along with Spence and Canelo, the unbeaten American also faced dangerous puncher Egidijus Kavaliauskas, who arguably scored a knockdown – which was ruled a slip – during their welterweight encounter in 2019.
It was down at 135lbs, though, where Crawford believes he was hit the hardest, against Olympic champion Yuriorkis Gamboa in 2014.
The Cuban entered their clash as a former world featherweight champion, but nonetheless punched with enough authority to inspire an urgent response from ‘Bud’.
For that reason, Crawford insisted on FULL SEND PODCAST that Gamboa, on a pound-for-pound metric, was the biggest puncher he faced as a professional.
“It’s got to be Gamboa. He caught me off-guard, coming in with my hands down – being cocky – and he just caught me to [an extent that] one side of my body got stiff.
“It was like ‘boom’ – he shocked me. I was like, ‘Damn, now I gotta get him out of there’.”
Having been forced to go through the gears, Crawford scored four knockdowns en route to a ninth-round stoppage victory over Gamboa, successfully defending his WBO world title.
