Pushing two-belt junior middleweight champion Sebastian Fundora beyond the WBO-imposed deadline to negotiate a three-belt unification bout, Terence Crawford on Wednesday balked, agreeing to let Fundora move on to another bout.
“The only one hurt by this is Fundora and his interest in fighting in December,” Fundora promoter Sampson Lewkowicz told BoxingScene minutes after the resolution was struck. “They waited until the last day. It’s disgraceful.”
ESPN.com first reported the agreement.
Four-division champion Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs) was enabled as a WBO “super” champion to request the bout against WBO/WBC champion Fundora (21-1-1, 13 KOs), who won the belts March 30 in a bloody affair with former champion Tim Tszyu.
Crawford, 37, has maintained since winning the WBA 154-pound belt from Israil Madrimov on Aug. 3 that he has his attention affixed on a superfight against fellow four-division champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, who wears three super middleweight belts.
Yet Crawford’s attorney won an extension to continue negotiations with Fundora beyond a late-September deadline.
“Fundora was the only one willing to fight,” Lewkowicz said.
The development frees Fundora to revisit meeting with former three-belt welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr. (28-1, 22 KOs), who in the ring expressed interest in fighting Fundora on the night of the Tszyu fight.
Lewkowicz says he hasn’t negotiated with anyone from the Spence camp but is prepared now to discuss the possibility of a late-January or early-February fight with Spence, possibly at AT&T Stadium outside Dallas.
Both fighters are under the Premier Boxing Champions banner.
The agreement between Fundora and Crawford is that they will revisit talks following Fundora’s next bout.
But Lewkowicz isn’t certain Crawford will fight if he didn’t jump at the opportunity now.
“Who knows if he will be there or if he’ll fight again?” Lewkowicz said.
Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.
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