After chasing Canelo Alvarez for years, Terence Crawford finally got the fight when the Mexican superstar signed a lucrative four-fight deal with the Saudis. He will have his dream fight on September 13th in Las Vegas and he must be preparing like crazy for it, right? Well, it doesn’t seem like that is the case.

Earlier, ‘Bud’ sent shockwaves by refusing a tune-up fight at 168 lbs before the September clash. It was even more surprising considering that ‘Cinnamon’ will fight William Scull on May 3 and the September fight with Crawford has no rehydration clause. However, the Nebraskan allayed the concerns of his fans by revealing his current weight of 186 lbs in a story he shared on Instagram. There was already a worry that the increased weight would make him sluggish and slow, hindering his quick footwork, rather than giving him greater strength. Amidst the chaos, former four-division champion Mikey Garcia ripped apart Crawford’s weight argument and revealed the reality of moving up in weight.

Weight cut inevitable, former unified champion explains

Garcia got to know about Terence Crawford’s recent transformation during a conversation with ES News. The revelation expectedly surprised him but it was nothing special. “Look everybody, even when you are “Moving up the weight,” you are still cutting weight,” stated the veteran boxer before he started explaining how moving up works in boxing.

Mikey Garcia explained, “Normally you walk around in heavier class.” A fighter on a break typically lets go of all the conditioning and training for a while after undergoing rigorous training and starving for months. So the brother of veteran trainer Robert Garcia explained that even going up the weight for a fight still means cutting in the end just hours before the weigh-ins. However, it is not as rigorous.

He gave his own example and revealed, “When I was fighting, my last few fights at welterweight division, I was weighing around 120, but I was walking around like 56-58, during training. So you still have to cut weight.”

Undoubtedly, Terence Crawford moved up because he will fight Canelo Alvarez at super middleweight. Furthermore, the constant doubts over the weight disparity might have created pressure for Crawford to increase his weight drastically to 186 lbs. While Mikey Garcia doesn’t understand the reason why Bud could be this heavy, this early, he had a few theories of his own.

Theories abound Terence Crawford’s weight gain

Garcia believes that even if the Nebraskan is “fighting at 68, but that’s probably is almost what he walks around.” So going up to 186 lbs, which is almost the cruiserweight division, doesn’t make sense. The interviewer then proceeded to ask the question, “So, why does he bulk up” to 186 lbs?

Surprisingly, the former unified lightweight champion doesn’t even believe that the image of the weight posted by Terence Crawford “is real. I don’t think he has even been that heavy,” which is true as Crawford’s walk-in weight is usually around 170-180lbs. Even Garcia himself has “never been that heavy my entire life.” 

Garcia believes that the Omaha native “probably hit those weights,” and was flexing that. Because it is very difficult for a fighter to put up that much weight in just a few months time. As “that’s almost like too fat, huge,” and is not a healthy weight. It will be more detrimental to him rather than pose a threat to Canelo Alvarez if indeed Terence Crawford is already weighing in at cruiserweight. But hey, if it works for him, it works for him. Let us know what you think down below.