Though ‘Bud’ had scored extraordinary victories before, like the all-time great thumping he handed Errol Spence Jr. in 2023 to become the best welterweight, this victory crowned him the best across all the sport’s weight classes. Crawford is a generational talent, and he proved as much in front of 70,000 boxing fans at the Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, and 42 million people on Netflix.
Considering the nature of his historic wins, combined with the platforms he’s fought on, it may seem strange to think that Crawford’s true wealth-building phase is yet to begin. He’s made a helluva lot of money, of course. For the beating he gave Spence, he earned a reported $25 million. A further $10 million headed to his bank for the Canelo win, he said. But this is significantly less than the apparent $150 million windfall Canelo took home.
Crawford accelerated his name-value with his wins, though, and he’ll have advanced the types of paychecks he could command in the near future. He could, very soon, quadruple his wealth – particularly if he was to follow the same playbook that Floyd Mayweather and Tyson Fury did during their peak money-making years in boxing.
Crawford may even have prepared the sport for a trick that ‘Money’ and ‘The Gypsy King’ perfected, and it sets the groundwork for the prospect of nine-figure paydays in the near future.
Terence Crawford to Emulate Floyd Mayweather & Tyson Fury
Mayweather and Fury made retirement a business.
Through their respective careers, they both announced abrupt retirements, only to return to the fight game often to attract greater paydays than they ever earned prior to those announcements.
Aged 30, Mayweather walked away from boxing after stopping Ricky Hatton, which earned him a reported $25 million in 2007. Two years later, Mayweather came back from retirement to win $60 million by beating Juan Manuel Marquez, which launched a second prime run for him. In 2015, Mayweather announced that he was once again done with boxing at 38 years old, having tallied $700 million in career earnings. Two years later, Mayweather again returned to fight Conor McGregor in his final retirement comeback for a $300 million score to become the sport’s first billionaire boxer.
Fury, too, perfected the art of turning retirement into theater and a promotional strategy.
In 2015, after dethroning Wladimir Klitschko — one of the decade’s best wins — Fury vacated the heavyweight belts, suffered from depression, and claimed retirement multiple times. However, he returned in 2018 and fought Sefer Seferi, Francesco Pianeta, and then Deontay Wilder, which sparked a thrilling three-fight series to earn Fury $120 million across the trilogy. After finishing Dillian Whyte in 2022, Fury returned against Derek Chisora, and a Riyadh Season swing which saw him fight Francis Ngannou and Oleksandr Usyk (twice) to take home more than $200 million.
Now, it appears to be Crawford’s turn.
In the run-up to the Canelo bout, Crawford repeatedly emphasized that he was only taking things “one fight at a time.” However, he’s also always indicated that he wants to retire on his “own terms.” Following his legacy-defining win over Canelo, he did not definitively rule out retirement, but he didn’t commit to fighting one more time, either. “I don’t know,” he said.
“I’ve got to sit down with my team and we’ll talk about it.”
Crawford only competes once a year.
And the opponents who make sense right now (Gennadiy Golovkin in a defense of his undisputed crown at super middleweight, a Canelo rematch, challenging Janibek for his middleweight belts to become a six-weight world champion, or even a bloodbath bout against Sebastian Fundora. Heck, even Ilia Topuria in a crossover bout involving the UFC superstar) may not be who makes most sense when Crawford fights again in 12 months time.
And so he could be preparing the world for a retirement statement, only to return in one year, like he would have done all along, against the best option that optimizes his earning power before he retires for real. History dictates that it’s an effective strategy to maximize the monetization of a final hurrah in boxing, like two of the sport’s icons have done before him.
Crawford has built an approximate net worth of $50 million in boxing so far, but if he plays it right, he could quadruple his wealth in the next few years. After all, if Mayweather made boxing a business and Fury made it theater, Crawford may be about to make it both — and laugh all the way to the bank as a result.
