Terence Crawford: Claressa Shields ‘would do well’ boxing Conor McGregor

Hey, remember the other day when Claressa Shields said she would fight Keith Thurman and Gennady Golovkin and Shawn Porter, and she thinks she can beat them, and everyone lost their goddamn minds about it?

Well, anyway, TMZ put the question to welterweight titleholder Terence Crawford.

“She’s confident. She’s confident in her ability and her skills, but that’s pretty much what she’s saying,” Crawford said. “I don’t think she’d really want to be in the ring with those fighters that she called out. But at the same time it just tells you that she’s so dominant in the female boxing world that she needs a man to fight. But I don’t believe she would actually step foot in the ring with those guys. She’s very confident, and it shows in the ring.”

Crawford was then asked if Shields might be able to beat, say, a novice male boxer, like UFC star Conor McGregor, who stepped into a boxing ring in 2017 and lost to Floyd Mayweather in a massive pay-per-view novelty.

“Man, I’m gonna tell you this. Claressa’s been getting in the ring, sparring men since I’ve known her,” Crawford said. “I feel like she could get in the ring and give anybody problems.”

He wouldn’t say that Shields would beat McGregor, but he wouldn’t count her out.

“I don’t know. Conor McGregor is a man, but at the same time, she would do well against him,” he offered.

Crawford then was asked why fans should tune in to his ESPN pay-per-view fight with Amir Khan on Saturday night, and he sold the fight better than he has at any other point in the build-up.

“You’ve got two fighters going head-to-head, neither fighter has ever been out-boxed,” Crawford said. “You’ve got Amir Khan with lightning hand speed, good movement, been in the ring with a lot of top fighters in his career. And you’ve got me, coming up, want to be king of the world.

“That gives the fans a lot to see, because he has nothing to lose, really. He’s very hungry to take my title. I can’t let that happen, so it’s gonna be some fireworks in there.”