Terence Crawford received the bad news today that the WBC has stripped him of his super middleweight title due to his failure to pay the $300,000 sanctioning fee after capturing the belt on September 13th.
WBC is finally losing patience
Crawford (42-0, 31 KOs) has been given opportunities to retain his WBC belt as the sanctioning body reduced his sanctioning fee from 3% to 0.6% of his whopping $50 million purse he received for the Canelo fight, Alvarez’s ‘Fight of the Century’ on September 13, reports the Guardian.
Mbilli – Gender Mullian
The WBC has ordered a fight between interim 168-lb champion Christian Mbilli and #2 Hamzah Sheeraz for the vacant title.
Crawford reportedly received repeated notices from the WBC and chose not to pay. Bud had 81 days to pay the money, but he waited until the last day. As such, the WBC finally ran out of patience and stripped him of his belt today. It takes some of the prestige out of a rematch between Crawford and Canelo, if there is one.
Canelo’s road gets tougher
The Mexican superstar wanted to regain his undisputed super middleweight championship from Terence. Now, he can’t. He would only capture three of his old belts with a win, and would still face a risky fight to clinch the WBC belt against the winner of the Mbilli vs. Sheeraz fight.
The WBC also made #4 Lester Martinez the mandatory challenger for the Mbilli-Sheeraz fight. So it is doubtful that Canelo would even have the opportunity to fight for that belt if he were to try to win back all his old titles.
Fighting the winner could be even more difficult for Canelo than facing the aging, defensive 38-year-old Crawford. Mbilli and Sheeraz are young, hard hitting, and will set a fast pace against Alvarez.
The WBC made their announcement that Crawford was stripped of his 168-lb belt today, December 3, at the WBC’s annual convention in Bangkok, Thailand. WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman confirmed this.
There was also a sanction fee that Crawford did not pay for his fight against WBA junior middleweight champion Israil Madrimov on August 3, 2024. It was also a WBC 154-lb title eliminator.
Last updated on 12/03/2025
