- WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman criticised Crawford on an Instagram livestream, framing his retirement as a refusal to face the next generation
- Manny Pacquiao joined the chorus questioning the timing — coming straight off a points win over Canelo at 168lbs
- UFC's Ilia Topuria, who had been chasing a Crawford fight for months, surprised everyone with a respectful retirement message instead of a callout
Right Then — Four Months In, And The Knives Are Out
Make no mistake, when Terence Crawford walked away from the sport last December at 42-0 — straight off a unanimous decision win over Canelo Alvarez at super-middleweight, in the biggest commercial fight of the year — he did it on his own terms. Five-division world champion. Two divisions undisputed. Last man standing in his era. That should have been a coronation.
Four months on, and we're getting the predictable second wave. Boxing being boxing, the people who couldn't get to him in the ring are now lining up to take their swings on social media and during livestreams. And the cast of characters this week is something properly unusual — a sanctioning body president, a rival from a previous generation, and a UFC champion who genuinely seems to have grown up between rounds.
Sulaiman's "Cowardly" Line — And Why It Lands So Awkwardly
The WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman went live on Instagram earlier this week, ostensibly to talk about Canelo's September return. The conversation drifted, as these things always do, towards Crawford. And Sulaiman delivered a line that's been picked up across every boxing site by the morning — that the retirement was, in his words, "cowardly," and that Crawford had "left the belts at the office" rather than face the next generation of contenders at 168lbs.
Let's not beat around the bush. That's a strange word to use about a man who fought Canelo at 168lbs after starting his pro career at 135. Crawford spent his entire career taking the harder fight when the easier one was always sitting there. He unified at 147 against the man holding the other belts when nobody else would. He moved up two divisions to face an active super-middleweight champion at the very top of his powers. The catalogue of risk-taking is honestly without parallel for a fighter of his era.
The real story behind Sulaiman's anger isn't bravery, it's belts. The WBC stripped Crawford of the 168lb title he'd won, ordering Christian Mbilli vs Hamzah Sheeraz for the vacancy — and Sheeraz has since been moved into a separate WBO route against Alem Begic on May 23. The mess that followed Crawford's exit is a sanctioning-body mess, not a Crawford mess. And calling a 38-year-old retiring undefeated "cowardly" is the kind of language you reach for when you're actually annoyed about lost sanctioning fees.
Pacquiao's Swipe — Old Habits
Right then, Manny Pacquiao's contribution was less direct but cut from the same cloth. Asked about Crawford in passing during a media day for his own ongoing rematch saga with Floyd Mayweather, Pacquiao questioned the timing — pointing out that retiring straight after the biggest payday of your career is "not the example" the next generation needs.
This is Pacquiao territory, and you have to take it with the relevant pinch of salt. The man who fought Crawford in 2021 and lost a unanimous decision has been chasing big-money fights ever since. He sees Crawford walking away from a guaranteed Canelo rematch and what reads as Topuria, Mbilli and Sheeraz queueing up behind that, and what he hears is money being left on the table. That's a mindset thing — Pacquiao genuinely cannot understand a fighter who's done because he's done. And in fairness to Manny, the man is still trying to chase Mayweather at 47. Different generations, different psychologies.
The point of contention from Manny's camp boils down to legacy and example. The point of contention from Crawford's side is that he's already given the legacy and the example. He won every belt that mattered, in three divisions, against three eras of champion. The "example" complaint reads like a man frustrated that his own retirement plan isn't going to work.
And Then There's Topuria — The Plot Twist
Here's the surprise, and it's a brilliant one. Ilia Topuria — UFC featherweight champion, and arguably the loudest member of the "Crawford ducked me" crowd over the past 12 months — went on Ariel Helwani's podcast this week and did the opposite of what everyone expected. No callout. No mockery. No new angle on the supposed crossover fight. Just genuine respect.
Topuria's exact wording was that Crawford is "one of those boxers I like to watch — I have learned many, many things from his style." He went on to say he didn't want to "talk or challenge him because he's retired," and finished with a clean wish of all the best to Crawford and his family. That's a hundred-and-eighty from a man who'd spent the back end of 2025 promising to knock Crawford out if their paths ever crossed.
It's class, properly. And it tells you something about how the boxing world looks at retirement versus how the MMA world increasingly looks at it. Topuria's been around long enough now to see what 38-and-undefeated actually means in this sport. He's also, you suspect, mature enough to recognise that the crossover fight was never really on the cards — and that the dignified move when a great walks away is to wish him well.
What This Tells Us About Crawford's Legacy
The reactions, taken together, are actually a strange kind of validation. Sulaiman is angry because the belts are out of his hands. Pacquiao is unhappy because the model of retiring full doesn't match his own. Topuria has gone full respect because the moment to chase the fight is gone. All three responses, in different ways, confirm where Crawford sits — at the centre of the boxing conversation, even four months after his last fight.
Make no mistake, that's the legacy. Five divisions. Two undisputed. 42-0. A career that ended with a points win over the biggest commercial draw in the sport. The fact that the WBC president is still talking about him on Instagram livestreams in late April tells you exactly how big the hole he's left actually is. Plenty of fighters retired in the same window. Nobody's still arguing about any of them. Different shadow. Different absence.
Luke's Take — Let The Man Go
Right then, here's where I land. Crawford has earned his exit. The "cowardly" line from Sulaiman is the kind of thing a sanctioning body president should never say about a five-division champion, and it'll age badly the moment we're looking back at this era in a decade. Pacquiao's swipe is more excusable, but it still reads as a man who can't see past his own model of how a career should end.
Topuria, weirdly, comes out of all of this looking the best of the three. The willingness to drop a feud cleanly when the moment for the fight has passed is a genuinely brilliant bit of self-awareness, and it's the kind of move that tells you something good about how he's thinking about his own career.
Crawford's retirement is settled. He doesn't owe the sport another camp, another payday, or another rematch. The conversation about who fills the 168lb hole — Mbilli, Sheeraz, Canelo's September comeback opponent — is a separate conversation. Treat it as such, leave the Crawford era alone, and let history do the rest. He's earned that much.