Archive
Bud Rising: Terence “Bud” Crawford’s tight family has his back as he defends title in his own backyard
Historically, Omaha has never been a great fight town the way Detroit or Boston or Philadelphia or New York City or Las Vegas have been and in some instances still are. Outside the local, hardcore boxing set, even a knowledable fight fan would be hard-pressed to name more than a handful of boxers, trainers, managers, and gyms here that ever made a real dent in the sport, amateur or professional. But boxing did once command a loyal and sizable following here for the Golden Gloves and for some of the few pros who made names for themselves, such as the Hernandez brothers and Ron Stander. That support may or may not come back with the emergence of Terence “Bud” Crawford, the recently crowned WBO lightweight champ who defends his title June 28 in his hometown of Omaha. An indication of just how far off the tracks Omaha’s boxing scene went is that his June 28 title defense will be the first time in 24 pro fights Crawford has fought in his hometown. There’s no question he’s already made history as the first world boxing titlist from here since the 1930s (Max Bear) and he’ll be the first from here to defend his title on his home turf. Boxing’s been close to dead here for 20 years and whether or not his bout with challenger Yuriorkis Gamboa will mean the dawn of a new era in boxing here nobody knows. It’s unlikely given the sport’s overall decline in popularity and this city’s traditionally at-arm’s-length approach to the ring business. Even if no boxing revival happens, Crawford’s shaken things up. As one old-line boxing observer who attended the press conference for the Crawford-Gamboa fight told me, “When Bob Arum showed up in Omaha, Neb. I almost dropped my shorts.” Not since Joe Frazier defended his heavyweight title against local Great White Hope Ron Stander in 1972 has there been anything of this magnitude boxing-wise here. But as that same observer noted, Frazier was one of eight total world champs then whereas today there are many dozens of “champions” because of the alphabet soup proliferation of fight sanctioning bodies. In other word, boxing has been dilluted. It’s lost serious lustre and cred in this age of mixed martial arts fighting, whose elite practitioners tend to command as much or more interest and respect than do boxing’s elite. The story that follows on Bud Crawford is my third about him (you can find the others on this blog). This one portrays him in the context of his tight family. I recently enjoyed meeting his mother, grandmother, sisters, and girlfriend, who’s also the mother of his two sons, and their words, along with those of family friend and attorney Hugh Reefe, describe Bud as a family-first man who has come a long way from the immature boy who fell in love with boxing but too often wanted to fight the world.
Bud Rising; Terence “Bud” Crawford’s tight family has his back as he defends title in his own backyard
Sometimes rocky journey for WBO lightweight champ from Omaha comes full circle
©by Leo Adam Biga
Appearing this week in The Reader (www.thereader.com)
When Terence “Bud” Crawford defends his WBO lightweight title June 28 at the CenturyLink Center, he’ll fight for himself, his tight-knit family and a boxing community that’s not seen anything like this since 1972.
Forty-two years ago heavyweight champion Joe Frazier came to town to battle local Great White Hope Ron Stander. Omaha was thrilled to host boxing’s ultimate event, but Stander never had more than a puncher’s chance. Predictably, he was outclassed and dismantled.
This is different. Crawford’s the hometown kid who realized his dream of being a world champ by unanimously decisioning Ricky Burns in Scotland March 1. He’s the title holder and Cuban opponent Yuriorkis Gamboa the contender. The champ and challenger enter this HBO main event with identical 23-0 (16 by KO) records. Crawford’s a skilled technician who’s never been dropped or hurt as a pro. By contrast, Stander was a slugger and bleeder who used brute force, not sweet science, in the ring. Though Stander didn’t hit the canvas much, he lost 21 bouts.
Another important difference is that while The Butcher fought in Omaha, he actually hailed from Council Bluffs. Crawford is Omaha through and through. When it was suggested the Bluffs and its casinos host Crawford’s title defense the fighter flatly refused, offended by the very notion he go across the river.
“I’m the type of person if I don’t want to do something I’m not going to do it,” he says. “I’m my own man. If I felt like they weren’t going to bring it to Omaha then we were going to go somewhere else and it wasn’t going to be Council Bluffs.”
Known for representing with trunks that read “Omaha,” he’s fiercely loyal to his Omaha-based boxing and biological families.
“They’re always going to be there for me, win or lose,” he says. “They’ve been with me the whole way.”
His peeps comprise Team Crawford. Most members of his training camp go back more than a decade when he was pegged a ring prodigy. His longtime trainer Midge Minor is like a father. His co-manager Brian “BoMac” McIntyre is one of his best buddies. They jointly opened the B & B Boxing Academy two years ago.
Omaha attorney Hugh Reefe, a former amateur boxer who now dispenses legal advice to the fighter, recalls seeing the young Crawford at the CW Boxing Club, where Bud got his start. The CW is the through-line that connects the champ’s boxing crew.
“Everybody knew who he was because he was different,” Reefe says. “He was outstanding. He really had all the skills. Everybody was talking about him. He just had a buzz around him. He’s got these cobra eyes that give him the peripheral vision to bob and weave but still have you locked in his sights.”
Victory Boxing coach John Determan, whose unbeaten son Johnny is on the June 28 undercard, says, “I’ve known Bud for a long time. The first time I saw him fight was early in his career in Joplin, Missouri. I remember driving home and telling my family ‘he’s going to be a great one.’ He is a true champion and not the type of guy who gets a big head. He’s worked hard for everything he’s done.”
Longtime boxing observer and historian Tom Lovgren says simply, “He’s the best that I’ve seen in Neb. He’s the Real McCoy.”
Crawford’s seemingly been called to his boxing ascension. His mother Debra Crawford says he came out of the womb “with his fists balled up,” as if ready to fight. He’s from a long line of pugilists: his grandfather, father and uncle all fought. Debra says Bud’s father “always said he’s going to be a million dollar baby boy.” Debra, who’s gone a round or two with her headstrong son and knows the difference between a jab and a cross, says, “God gave him a gift.”
Everyone confirms young Bud himself was convinced he was destined for greatness. “He’d always tell me, ‘Mom, I’m going to make it, I’m going to be something. I’m going to be a world champ,” Debra says.
Lots of kids say that, his friend Kevin notes, “but they ain’t got the same dedication as him,” adding, “He’s been after this for years.”
Terence “Bud” Crawford
Now that he’s done it, Reefe says, “It seems a little surreal.” Even Bud’s mom admits, “Sometimes it’s like a dream.” Especially dreamlike given all he’s overcome. Possessing a notorious temper as a youth, the stubborn Crawford had scores of verbal and physical run-ins.
“Bud used to get in trouble in the gym and they used to send him home,” Debra says. Sometimes, he wanted no part of it. “One time, he hid in his room when Midge came by to pick him up. He told me to tell Midge he ain’t home. I went out and told Midge, ‘He’s in here, come and get him.’ Bud said ‘Mom, you’re a snitch.’ Yeah, I had to keep him out of trouble. I’d rather him be in the gym than out in the street.”
Other times, says maternal grandma Velma Jones, sporting a Team Crawford T-shirt, he couldn’t stand to be away from the ring.
“I used to have him ride along with me when I had to go places and he’d be like, ‘I have to get to the gym…’ He loved that gym.”
Crawford came up in a Hood where street life claims many young men. He avoided the pitfalls but still found trouble. The youngest of three siblings, he sometimes got into scrapes with older, bigger kids and his two sisters would come to his rescue. You fight one Crawford, “you gotta fight us all,” his sister Shawntay says.Debra recalls, “One day I saw Bud getting beat up by this older boy and I told those two (her daughters), ‘Y’all better get out there and help your brother.” They did and together with Bud dispatched the bully. Bud’s sister Latisha remembers, “The guy came back and apologized that he took that ass whuppin’ ” If any Crawfords ever got beat they’d be the ones apologizing for letting the family down.
Family, friends, coaches all attest to how competitive he is.
His girlfriend Iesha Person, with whom he has two sons, says, “He don’t like to lose at anything – darts, cards, basketball, pool. Everything is a competition with him, everything. He’s very determined to win in everything he does. Like he just learned how to play chess not too long ago and now he’s beating the people that taught him. So I can’t even picture him losing.”
Reefe, who’s been trounced by him in chess, says, “He likes to talk and rub it in, too, when he’s winning.”
Everyone agrees he’s always had a mouth on him. Insubordinate behavior earned Crawford school suspensions and expulsions. He caused his mom headaches.
“Yes, he did,” she says. “He went to a bunch of schools. He even went to a couple alternative schools. Yeah, he stayed in some trouble. One time he shot up the Edmonson (recreation) center with a BB gun. He was on probation for like three or four years.”
Few expected much of him.
“When he was young I know a lot of people told him, ‘Oh, you ain’t going to be nothing, you’ll probably end up in the penitentiary.’ But like I told him, ‘Don’t let them folks get you down talking about you won’t be nothing, you go ahead and do what you have to do.’ And he kept on with it,” his grandma says.
“I’m very proud of him because I told him he wasn’t going to be shit,” Debra says. “He tells me now, ‘Mom, remember what you said?’ We laugh about it.”
She says things really turned around for him at Bryan High School.
“The principal really helped him. He still keeps in touch with him, too. His teachers are surprised he’s made it this far. They’re proud of him. They didn’t think he was going to be able to make it but he made it.”
Debra marvels her once problem son has “put Omaha on the map as a black young man.” It’s been a journey with some stumbles. He was considered an Olympics prospect but fell out of grace with USA Boxing. He was a favorite to win the National Golden Gloves in Omaha but lost a close decision he felt was payback for his bad boy image.
This image and the one above are of a very young Bud at the CW Boxing Club, ©photos courtesy Jim Krantz
Early in his pro career he nearly lost his life in a shooting the week of a fight when he joined a dice game that went sour and as he left in a car someone fired a shot that hit his head. He went to the nearest hospital.
Debra recalls getting the news at home.
“I was asleep when my mom woke me up to tell me. ‘Bud just got shot.’ I waited a minute, got up and came downstairs. Then my sister and I went out there. They wouldn’t let me see him. When they finally called me in Bud was sitting on the edge of the bed laughing, saying, ‘I’m still going to fight on Friday.’ I said, ‘No, you’re not, they’ve got to stitch your head up.’ He was lucky because the bullet bounced off his head. The doctor told me, ‘He’s got a hard head.'”
As if the family needed proof.
Bud and everyone around him traces his new-found maturity to that incident and to becoming a father.
“He’s come a long ways,” grandma Jones says.
“He’s more focused,” Kevin says.
“He’s a great father,” says Iesha. “He took care of me and my daughter before we had a son together.”
Bud’s sister Lastisha says she gets emotional thinking about how far Bud’s come.
“I used to have bad dreams and then when he got shot one of the dreams kind of came true. When he went in that ring and won that championship I thought back to how he was when he was little, hot-headed, and just didn’t want to listen to nobody. And to see him now it’s like, Wow, my little brother for real is world champion. I’m like really, really proud of him.”
Velma says some of her grandson’s drive to excel is fueled by the decisions in the ring he feels he was robbed of as an amateur. It’s why as a pro he takes no chances and strives to dominate from start to finish, just as he did against Burns in taking all three judges’ cards.
“After that fight in Scotland he told me he was scared they were going to take some points away from him. He thought they’d use some kind of technicality to make him lose the fight. But he come on through. He showed ’em y’all cant do no stealing from me, not tonight.'”
Co-manager BoMac says Crawford feeds off “always being the underdog and always having something against him – that lights his fire and makes him train harder.”
Bud’s boisterous family will be out in force come fight night just as they were in Glasgow. Only this time the Crawford contingent will be much larger, with relatives coming from both coasts and lots of points in between. He welcomes their presence, no matter their size.
“It’s not going to be a distraction or anything,” he says. “They’re there any other fight, so it’s just another day in the gym for me. When I was in Scotland…Dallas…Orlando…Vegas, they were there with me, so you know I’m used to having them cheering me on and not letting them interfere with what I’ve got to do in the ring. You’ve got to keep your mind focused on the task at hand.”
Bud training in Colorado Springs
Per his custom, he trained in Colorado Springs several weeks before returning June 22. Back home he’s fine-tuned his body and mind.
“I just chill and visualize what I’m going to do in there and then just go ahead and do it. You’ve got to see it to be able to do it. When I put my mind to it, it’s already done.”
Iesha, who saw him training six-plus hours a day in Colo., admires
that “he puts so much work into it.” “Hard work and dedication” has gotten him this far and he isn’t about to slack off now, Latishsa says.
Crawford’s unsure whether Omaha will ever fully embrace him as its champion. His family’s glad he’s getting his due after years toiling in obscurity. The Gamboa fight will be his first as a pro in his hometown.
“He’s finally getting noticed,” Debra says, adding people claiming to be cousins have been coming out of the woodwork since winning the title.
Hugh Reefe is impressed by how success, fame and big paydays have not changed Crawford’s lifestyle.
“He’s a pretty simple guy and I like that he’s kept everything the same. He’s handling it really well, he’s got really good instincts, He’s intuitive. He’s always concerned and thoughtful about how things affect his family.”
Those closest to him sense that after waiting so long for this stage he’s going to put on a show.
Iesha says, “I know he’s not giving up that belt.”
Everyone agrees Gamboa may regret saying at the press conference Bud hasn’t fought the caliber of fighters he has. Latisha says as soon as he uttered those words Bud vowed, “I’m going to kick your butt.”
Debra and her daughters predict Bud winning by knockout. “I pick the 6th round because Bud likes to figure him out. If Gamboa hits Bud, Bud’s going to angry and it’s going to be all over,” she says.
God forbid it comes down to a controversial decision that goes against Bud. “He’d probably go nuts if he feel he got cheated,” Latisha says.
“But he ain’t got to worry about that,” Shawntay says, “because he ain’t going to lose. We got this.”
Latisha can see he’s ready for Saturday. “I know when he’s serious, he’s got the eye of the tiger. There’s just something about his eyes that you just know that he’s about to go handle it.”
Reefe, who drove Iesha and the kids to see Bud in Colo., saw a fighter in peak condition. “I realized I was watching a world-class athlete. He was getting getting it on in a workmanlike, no-nonsense manner, going from one workout to the next, station to station, not being lazy about anything. He was in charge.”
BoMac confirms that Crawford “just looks at it like he’s got a job to go do,” adding, “He’s like, ‘Let me do my job, everyone else do their job, let’s go about our business and let’s go home.” He says Crawford’s “will and determination” separate him from the pack.
That intensity is often masked by his laidback demeanor. “He likes to joke and play around, wrestle, he’s a kid, you know,” Reefe says. “He’s always been like that,” says Debra, fingering a stack of title fight posters. “He’s so easygoing you wouldn’t believe he’s got a big fight coming up,” adds grandma. Shawntay points out, “He don’t ever talk about the fight, he just goes in there and fights.”
As for the fighter himself, he’s using any real or perceived slight – from Gamboa’s words to what he sees as a lack of local corporate sponsors to the Bluffs controversy – as motivation to leave no doubts June 28.
“I’m still hungry to get better and to prove to the world that I belong here. This is just a stepping stone.”
The Crawford-Gamboa fight can be seen live on HBO Boxing After Dark starting at 9 p.m. (CST).
For tickets to the fight, visit http://www.ticketmaster.com.
Terence “Bud” Crawford in the fight of his life for lightweight title: top contender from Omaha’s mean streets looks to make history
UPDATE: The subject of this story, Terence “Bud” Crawford of Omaha, won the WBO world lightweight championship in convincing fashion on March 1 over Ricky Burns in Glasgow, Scotland. My Reader cover story about Crawford appeared right on the eve of his title bid and just as was his gameplan he left no doubt and nothing to chance in claiming a unanimous 12-round decision.
Boxing in Omaha was never necessarily big the way it’s been in certain cities and towns but for a long time it definitely exerted a presence and enjoyed a loyal following here on both the amateur and professional ends of the sport. Starting around the 1980s and certainly by the 1990s interest among participants and spectators fell off rather dramatically. Part of that is explained by the general decline in boxing that happened nationwide as the sport found itself increasingly criticized for the injuries and deaths and longterm disabilities suffered by fighters as well as scandalized by the lax rules and ethics attending the game that allowed professional opponents like Omaha’s own Bruce “The Mouse” Strauss to take fight after fight in close order under assumed names and with little or no training. The reprehensible and mondo bizzaro antics of various high profile fighters didn’t help its standing. With boxing under attack and more and more relegated to a frringe actviity mixed martial arts arrived on the scene to offer something new and different and ever since then boxing’s struggled to keep apace or even hold on in some cases. It’s not so much that society rejects violent or extreme sports, otherwise how to explain the popularity of MMA, but that boxing is seen as something archaic or passe in a world of many high adrenalin, high risk sports that push the envelope, whether it be MMA, snowboarding, skateboarding, hang gliding, windsurfing, base jumping, rock climbing, mountain biking, et cetera. The list goes on and on. Omaha boxing gyms used to number a dozen or more at any given time but now that number is a fraction of what it used to be. Many gyms offer heavy and speed bags and perhaps even a ring for shadowboxing but these are more fitness centers focused on the conditioning benefits of boxing rather than on specifically training boxers to do actual combat. A sure sign of boxing’s decline here was when Omaha hosted the National Golden Gloves a few years ago and the crowds numbered a few thousand at most, which was less than what local-regional boxing tournaments here used to draw.
Nebraska’s produced some good fighters over time but very, very few who could be considered world class. The top flight fighters out of here have become even fewer and farther between. With this as the background and context for where boxing resides in Omaha a local fighter named Terence “Bud” Crawford is contending for the WBO lightweight championship in Glasgow, Scotland on March 1. Considering what Crawford is going for there should be more buzz around here about his title bid but then again the lack of attention, awareness, and excitement is an accurate reflection of boxing’s tenuous position these days. As I say in the following cover story about Crawford I wrote for The Reader (www.thereader.com) , which hits the stands Feb. 27, if this were happening decades ago Crawford would be the toast of this sports town. But these days Creighton men’s basketball is the preferred sports flavor and its superstar Doug McDermott is the man of the hour, not Crawford. There are a lot of reasons for that beyond those I described above and I allude to some of them in my Reader piece.
On this blog you can find an earlier New Horizons story I wrote about Crawford and his close relationship with trainer Midge Minor. You can also find stories about the CW Boxing Gym, also known as the CW Boxing Club and CW Youth Resource Center, which is where Crawford got his start. And for that matter you can find several more boxing pieces I’ve done over the years about Ron Stander, Morris Jackson, the Hernandez Brothers, Servando Perales, Tom Lovgren, Kenny Wingo and the Downtown Boxing Club, et cetera.
A photo montage of Terence “Bud’ Crawford:
Terence “Bud” Crawford in the fight of his life for lightweight title: top contender from Omaha’s mean streets looks to make history
©by Leo Adam Biga
Soon to appear in The Reader (www.thereader.com)
As Omaha glories in Creighton Bluejays hoops superstar Doug McDermott’s historic season, another local sports figure going for greatness flies under the radar.
Boxer Terence “Bud” Crawford challenges for the WBO lightweight title March 1 against champion Ricky Burns in the title holder’s native Scotland. The scheduled 12-rounder is being televised in the States by AWE, a hard to find cable-satellite network. The fight is scheduled for 2 p.m. (CST).
The CU campus McDermott’s put on the map is mere few blocks from The Hood Crawford grew up in and where his recently opened gym, B & B Boxing Academy, 3034 Sprague Street, is located. But these two stars might as well be worlds apart. McDermott’s a product of white privilege. His biggest challenge was deciding whether to return for his senior year or sign an NBA contract. The African-American Crawford is a product of the inner city. He grew up fighting in the streets and getting kicked out of schools. On the eve of his first pro bout he was shot in the head on the same mean streets of his youth.
McDermott, soon to be a three-time All-American, is the consensus favorite to win national player of the year honors. He competes before 18,000 adoring home fans. Crawford’s compiled a 22-0 record, 16 by knockout, yet he’s never once fought professionally in his hometown though he trains and resides here. Where McDermott excels at a team sport embedded in popular culture, Crawford toils at a lone wolf game that’s lost traction in this mixed martial arts age. While McDermott’s every move is celebrated and scrutinized, Crawford operates in relative obscurity. Unless you follow boxing on HBO, you’ve likely not seen him fight and until reading this were oblivious to his upcoming title shot.
Decades ago, when boxing still mattered in places like Omaha and when there weren’t alphabet soup titles with deluded value, Crawford’s world championship bid would have been big news. Still, just getting in this position should be cause for celebration today. If he prevails in Glasgow – oddsmakers and experts give him anywhere from a decent to an excellent chance – he’d be the first major boxing champ from Neb. since heavyweight Max Bear in 1934. The last time a local fought for an undisputed title was 1972, when Ron “The Bluffs Butcher” Stander met heavyweight king Joe Frazier at the Civic Auditorium and got bloodied like a stuck pig for his trouble.
Co-manager-trainer Brian “BoMac” McIntyre feels Omaha’s not embracing this historic moment involving one of its own. He says given the way Crawford represents by proudly identifying his hometown on his trunks and giving it props in interviews, it’s a shame Omaha doesn’t “stand up” for him in return. If that lack of love bothers Crawford the hard-as-nails pragmatist with washboard abs isn’t admitting it. He’s aware boxing is dead here and he’s intent on reviving it. He did soak up support from friends, family and well-wishing fans at a send-off party at Brewsky’s before Team Crawford left Feb. 22.
Ask what winning a world title might mean to his community and Crawford answers, “Honestly, I really don’t know because Omaha is really big on MMA, Creighton and Nebraska and nobody really talks about boxing that much. I feel if I was to bring that title back here it could boost us or it could just stay the same, where like a handful of people acknowledge what just happened and the rest are still like, Oh, it’s just boxing.
“We’ve got a lot of talent in Omaha but a lot of people give up because of no resources and backing. As a professional you have to go to your opponent’s backyard because we don’t really have professional boxing in Omaha. I can’t remember the last time we had a full professional boxing card in Omaha. It’s real down here, so it’s real hard to get motivated on boxing.”
He hopes his academy does for youth what the CW Boxing Club where he started and still has ties did for him and many others.
“We want to help kids that need help with that father figure in their life by talking to them, teaching them to stay in school and listen to their parents and elders, things like that. A lot of kids in the neighborhood don’t have nowhere to be after school. They can just come in here, relieve some stress, relieve some anger. We don’t know what’s going on in their household. They might be going through a lot and boxing might be the outlet to relieve some of that rather than doing something they’ll regret the rest of their life.”
Crawford hasn’t let Omaha’s tepid interest hold him back.
“You know what, he don’t give a f___ about that, I swear to God he don’t,” McIntyre says. “He looks at it like, ‘If they do get behind me so be it, if they don’t, oh well.’ They really weren’t behind him when he was an amateur and now that he’s here they’re really still not behind him. That’s just more fuel to the fire to win the fight.”
McIntyre, a Team Crawford member since the fighter was a top amateur for the CW, whose namesake Carl Washington discovered the young scrapper, says Crawford’s always fought an uphill battle for respect. As a teen Crawford’s hot temper made him a handful. After some false starts, CW coach Midge Minor took him under his wing.
“I was a bad kid, when I came in I was just rough, I didn’t care about training, nothing, I just wanted to fight,” recalls Crawford. “Midge would throw me in there with anybody, he didn’t care. Sometimes I’d get beat up, sometimes I’d win. The thing that separated me from everybody else was if I got beat up by one of the older kids I’d come back the next day like, ‘I want to spar him, I don’t want nobody else but him.’ And Midge would be looking at me, ‘You’ve got heart, I like you.’ So I’d get in there and keep sparring until I started beating them. I think that’s what really elevated me to where I’m at.”
Minor, who’s old enough to be Crawford’s grandpa, has been the main wise counsel and steadying influence for the fighter.
“Anytime I needed anything or needed someone to talk to he was always there,” Crawford says. “He’s played a big factor in my life. He’s a great father figure in my life.”
Following stints at alternative schools, Crawford finally found a home at Bryan High School, where he graduated, Despite great success as an amateur, his hard case attitude alienated him from the boxing establishment. He also ran up against the stigma that fighters from here traditionally fare poorly at nationals. Crawford dispelled that image by advancing to the semis of the National Golden Gloves in Omaha. Outside the Gloves he beat virtually everyone in his weight and age class. But the politics of the sport pegged him a bad apple and so certain opportunities bypassed him.
McIntyre says, “He wasn’t the poster boy for USA boxing. Terence was a bodacious kid. He’s always been the underdog. When he went to the nationals and to the Olympic Trials people said you can’t do it because you’re from Neb. and they always get beat in the first round, so he’s always had something against him.”
Crawford never let those perceptions stop him, even after being kicked off the USA team, thus spoiling any chance of fighting in the Olympics, which was fine with the fighter, who had a bigger dream in mind.
Then, as now, nothing gets in the way of what Crawford wants.
“He was ranked number one and there was a national tournament in Calif. we couldn’t afford to go to,” says McIntyre. “USA Boxing gave him a stipend every other month and he saved his money and paid for his own ticket and hotel. At 17 he went out there by himself, he found a coach to get him to the weigh-ins. He found a way. That will and determination separates him from anybody I’ve ever run into.”
Crawford’s not only kept McIntyre and Minor in his camp. he’s assembled a team made up of his old sparring partners and coaches. Loyalty is big with him. His other co-manager is Cameron Dunkin, a Las Vegas-based boxing magnet who handles the business side.
Some predict the highly skilled Crawford, who combines quick hands and feet with deft moves and some power, will handle the more experienced Burns. The champ’s 36-2-1 record includes many high stakes fights but some recent disputed decisions. Others question how Crawford will deal with such a big stage before a hostile crowd.
Crawford says, “It’s going to be a different atmosphere, everybody’s going to be against me, but I like it like that because that’s just going to feed me energy to shut ’em up and keep ’em quiet.”
He’s well aware he can’t afford to leave anything to chance and give the judges any wiggle room to score the fight in favor of the home boy.
“That’s the plan – to dominate like I’e been doing with all my other opponents. In my 22 fights I can’t think of a fighter I’ve fought that won two rounds, so I’ve just got to be me and do what I do best.”
He’s keeping his emotions in check leading up to the bout
“Honestly, I ain’t got no feeling at all, like I’m not excited whatsoever. The other day BoMac said, ‘Man, ain’t you anxious?’ and I was like, ‘Naw, I’m just ready to fight’ I’ve been doing this all my life, this is my dream. I never wanted to be an Olympian, I never wanted to win a gold medal, I always wanted to be a world champion. I wanted to turn pro at 17 but they insisted I try out for the Olympic team.”
With him finally on the cusp of HIS dream he can’t afford giddiness.
“This is what I wanted to do, so now that it’s here I’m the one who’s got to go in there and handle my business and then when I win it I’m going to be happy. It’s strictly business right now. I’m not happy I’m fighting for a world title, no. I’m going to be happy when I win it though.
“I’m ready to do what I’ve been doing all my life and that’s showing people how good my talent is.”
Many Omaha boxing scene veterans believe Crawford may just be the best fighter, pound-for-pound, to ever come out of here.
Crawford, the father of two children, says his confidence is high because he’s left nothing to chance in training. Sticking with a routine that’s worked before, he began training for Burns in Omaha, then went to Colorado Springs for the added conditioning high altitude promotes and the better sparring available there, the site of USA Boxing. Being away from home also helped eliminate distractions. McIntyre says it’s all about getting focused and following a regimented workout process from 8 to 8 daily that ensures he didn’t peak too early.
After the four-week camp Crawford returned home mid-February to fine-tune, stay sharp and maintain just the right edge.
Even after weeks of intense training that encompassed running, swimming, sit-ups and sparring, Crawford says there’s still an element of doubt that naturally attends any fight.
“There’s always going to be a doubt and a what-if with any fighter, I don’t care who he is. They’re going to always have doubt in the back of their mind. Did they do enough? What if this happens? What if that happens? But that’s when you got to adapt and you got to adjust to the situation and that’s what I plan to do.”
All the coaching and strategizing in the world doesn’t mean anything, he says, if you can’t execute it.
“It’s up to me to establish it and carry it on into the ring. We can train all day, every day, we can do this and that. Like Ricky Burns, he can say he’s got something new, he’s going do this and that, but all that don’t matter if you get in the ring and you can’t establish what you want to do. When we get in the ring then it’s all going to tell.”
Crawford refuses to fight out of character. He’s too smart to be drawn into adopting a style or forcing the action that’s not in his best interest. Even when boos rained down on him in Orlando, Fla. as he dismantled Russian Andrey Klimov in an Oct. 4, 2013 fight, Crawford was content to stick with his plan of outboxing his foe even though going for a KO would have pleased onlookers and HBO executives. He says he’ll neither get into a brawling match with Burns nor take undue chances testing the champ’s repaired jaw, which was broken in his last title defense, for the sake of pleasing the crowd or boosting ratings.
“I’m not going to go out there and just go for haymakers and get caught with stupid stuff. I’m just going to go out there and do what I do and if the knockout comes it comes, if it don’t it don’t. I’m just going out there to win that title and that’s the only thing on my mind.”
He maintains a healthy respect for Burns or any opponent.
“I don’t underestimate nobody. Even if it’s a fight I know I’m going to knock the dude out I always go in there like, What if? It keeps me driving, it keeps me on my Ps and Qs, it keeps me more focused because you never know – one punch can beat you.”
He says you also won’t catch him doing any pre-fight grandstanding or gamesmanship at the weigh-in press conference. Not his style, though he’s says if Burns comes at him he’ll come right back. However, Crawford does use those occasions to size up his opponent and what he finds can be revealing.
“Sometimes I’ll see right through you. I can see in your eyes a little twitch. On the outside you look like you’re this big bad guy but on the inside you’re afraid for your life. You’re a nervous wreck.”
At the end of the day, there’s nothing about this fight or any fight that scares him. Compared to a bullet in the head it’s no big deal.
“I’ve been shot, I’m not going over there worried about what’s going to happen in the ring. I’m ready, period. I’ve got my mind made up, I’ve got my goals set, and I’m going up there and I’m going to get it. I’m not going to let nothing or nobody stop me from conquering my dreams.”
Do the right thing Omaha and stand up for your own as he goes for history.
Giving kids a fighting chance: Carl Washington and his CW Boxing Club and Youth Resource Center
Giving kids a fighting chance: Carl Washington and his CW Boxing Club and Youth Resource Center
©by Leo Adam Biga
Originally appeared in The Reader (www.thereader.com)
Organizations serving at-risk kids come and go but few stay the course the way the CW Youth Resource Center, 1510 Cass Street, has since opening in 1978.
Founder-director Carl Washington hosts a Nov. 29 open house at CW from 4 to 8 p.m. to celebrate 35 years of structured youth activities.
His experience mentoring youth began a decade earlier, when he was like a big brother to his nephew Howard Stevenson. After Stevenson was shot and killed by an Omaha police officer in the wake of a 1968 civil disturbance in North Omaha, Washington was angry. A bully and street fighter at the time, he went to the old Swedish Auditorium boxing gym looking to release his rage.
“I went down there and picked on the first guy I thought maybe I should be able to beat up, a chubby kid by the name of Ron Stander.”
That’s Ron Stander, aka the Bluffs Butcher, who fought heavyweight champion Joe Frazier in a 1972 title bout. But when Washington first laid eyes on him Stander was still a pudgy, no-name amateur.
“Everyone was paying attention to him. My thought was, Knock him off and then you can be the top guy. It didn’t work that way.”
After weeks pestering coaches to let him spar Stander, the exhibition was set. Washington was so confident he brought an entourage. He knew he’d miscalculated when he landed his best blows and Stander didn’t even blink. The first punch Washington absorbed was the hardest he’d even been hit. After a few more punishing shots he feigned injury to end the onslaught.
Washington wanted to quit the sport right then but Stander encouraged him. The two men became friends. While Stander went on to make boxing his career, Washington only fought a year. Well-schooled by the late trainer Leonard “Hawk” Hawkins, Washington saw his true calling not as a fighter but as a coach. He believed boxing could give kids a safe activity in place of running the streets.
He first tried forming the gym in 1971 but it didn’t take. Seven years later he gave it another go, this time with help from two mentors. A lifelong inner city resident, Washington daily saw unsupervised kids getting into mischief and brawls, hungry for structure, and he felt he could give them the healthy alternative they needed.
“A group of kids I ran across were fighting and I broke it up and took them downstairs to my basement and started working with them. We took two of them to a boxing show at the National Guard Armory and they both won trophies. We put the trophies up on the mantel and the other kids wanted to win trophies, too. So, it grew from there.”
He’d have two dozen youths training in his basement at one time with another similar-sized group out on a long run before they took their turn hitting the bags.
CW took the local amateur boxing scene by storm, winning hundreds of individual and team trophies at smokers and the Midwest Golden Gloves.
“A couple years we won every weight division,” he says of the Gloves.
Washington ran a tight ship. “I instilled discipline. Our guys had to walk the line.”
He bemoans the lax standards commonplace today.
“I see a lack of respect for one another from a lot of kids, a lot of people, Respect is not on the table like it used to be. Respect is an art we should be going back to. I think a lot of that is lost. When all those factors are gone that’s why there’s so much chaos.”
He insists boxing’s a useful tool for instilling values.
“Out of a hundred kids probably one of them might box and go all the way to the Gloves and do all he’s supposed to do in boxing. But for the rest of them it might open the door for them to get into wrestling, football, basketball and other sports. We can give them that discipline.”
He says that discipline carries over to school, work and family life.
The kids he started with are now parents and send their kids to him.
Reaching kids takes patience and instinct. “I have a feel for when I meet a kid exactly what the kid really wants – if he wants to box or to get in shape or if he’s down here because his mother needs a baby sitter. Sometimes they may have aspirations of becoming a champion.”
Terence “Bud” Crawford is a once in a lifetime phenom who came up through the CW ranks and now is on the verge of fighting for the world lightweight title. He remains loyal to the CW, where he still trains under the man who got him started there, Midge Minor, and is managed by another CW alum, Brian McIntyre.
In its early years CW was a predominantly African American gym. Its fighters weren’t always well received.
“We ran into a lot of negativity in the beginning. Some cities we boxed in weren’t too friendly. It seemed like the ones closest to Omaha were the unfriendliest,” says Washington. He recalls that before a Wahoo, Neb. boxing show his fighters got debris and racial slurs hurled at them. They silenced the crowd with excellence.
“A lot of parents with me wanted us to leave and I said, ‘No, we’re not going to leave.’ We parked the cars going toward the street just in case we had to get out of there in a hurry. I said, ‘We’re going to go back in there, box, and act like gentlemen and we’re not going to respond to the crowd. We had 16 bouts that day and we won all 16.”
Boxing hasn’t been the only avenue for youth to explore at CW, which moved from his basement to the Fontenelle Park pavilion to south downtown to its current spot in the early 1990s. CW once featured recording studios and a dance floor to feed the rap and breakdance demand. Washington organized talent showcases and concerts highlighting the club’s many homegrown performing artists
“We were involved in a little bit of everything. We were doing anything we thought could reach kids.”
He says he put on the first gang reconciliation concert back in the mid-1980s when he was doing gang prevention-intervention work before it had a name.
He cobbled together support from grants, donations, fundraisers and raffle sales.
“We had to jump over a lot of hurdles in the beginning. What really built the club was raffle tickets. We were out on the corners and kids sold raffle tickets. I was able to do the (initial) restoration here through the raffle sales.”
At the boxing gym’s peak, he says, “We were going all over the country with kids in the car to boxing shows and coming back with a lot of trophies.” But he feels CW was never fully embraced by its hometown, where fans booed the club’s fighters when the national Golden Gloves were fought here. Boxing’s also lost kids to martial arts and other activities.
Looking back, he says he’s proudest of just “being able to survive,” adding, “We’ve been pretty blessed.”
Though CW doesn’t have as many competitive boxers as it once did, he’s seeing more kids come as a result of Bud Crawford’s success. He scaled down the club’s entertainment facets after frictions surfaced between performers. He stopped holding concerts after a drive-by shooting outside the club. He recently formed a hoops program as a new outlet .
One thing that hasn’t changed, he says, is “I open my doors to everybody and I never charge a membership fee.”
For more information about the CW’s programs, call 402-671-8477.
Related articles
- The kid with the Golden Gloves (wafb.com)
Mini-Profile
Leo Adam Biga's My Inside Stories 