“Say my name,” Crawford said during the rant. “Say I knock out Terence Crawford.”
Crawford also insisted that Ennis and his team avoided him earlier in his career because they believed he was not yet ready.
“I would have ended Boots’ career before it started,” Crawford said in the clip. “That’s a reason why he went the other way. Stop playing with me.”
“He wasn’t ready yet. He needed a few more fights, they said. I’m trying to play nice because I support the young man and all that.”
The exchange reignited a long-running debate among boxing fans about why the fight never happened when Crawford held the welterweight titles, and Ennis rose through the ranks as one of the division’s most dangerous younger contenders.
During that period, Crawford was focused on winning undisputed champion against Errol Spence Jr. before moving on to bigger fights at junior middleweight and eventually super middleweight against Canelo Alvarez. Ennis remained at welterweight, where many fans believed he was shunned due to his athleticism, power and aggressive style.
Crawford retired after defeating Canelo at 168 pounds in 2025, while Ennis is now fighting at junior middleweight and preparing for a June 27 fight against unified champion Xander Zayas in Brooklyn. The weight difference has also become part of the debate, as Crawford would likely need to drop 14 pounds at age 38 for the fight to realistically happen.
“Fucking dog. You say and do anything,” Ennis posted online afterwards. “We closed on June 27, two-time unified champion charging.”
Ennis is currently positioned as one of Matchroom and DAZN’s younger key stars, while Crawford has spent much of the latter stage of his career outside of traditional promotional structures. Those business realities also played a role in why the game never moved beyond discussion stages.
The Crawford talk could quickly die down if Ennis loses to Zayas on June 27, but the clip still reignited interest in one of the biggest unanswered fights of the welterweight era because Crawford sounded far from relaxed about the subject despite being retired.
