How Crawford-Álvarez upended the superfight

"I'M THE ONE that made him go after Canelo," Carl Washington says some three months before the biggest fight of the year. And maybe the last battle of its kind. He's talking about Terence Crawford, whom he calls Bud. Washington is especially excited since it's the sort of fight Crawford has sought for years. A pathway to prove how great he is. And who better to do that against than the modern day face of the sport: Saul "Canelo" Álvarez?

If anyone would know who Crawford needed to fight, it's Washington. He's the one who runs a boxing gym in downtown Omaha. The one who almost 30 years ago asked a school-age boy who lived in the house behind his, if he wanted to box. That was Bud.

"I said, 'You know what your dream fight would be?'" Washington continues. "'Canelo. Then you and your grandkids can retire.'"

As Washington talks, young boxers slowly fill his gym, CW Boxing Club, for another day's workout. A few are professionals but most are amateurs. In the same way all of them dream of becoming boxing world champions, they all say being from Nebraska makes it easier for them to be overlooked.

"How was Crawford as a young boxer?" I ask.

"Bud was a mean little kid," Washington says.

He tells a story of the first time Crawford stepped in the ring and became so angry and frustrated from being punched that tears of anger flooded his eyes. He tore his gloves off, wanting to fight bareknuckle against his opponent. "Bud just started wailing on him, didn't want to stop," Washington remembers. "It happened in that corner over there," he says while pointing at a ring where boxers have begun to warm up.

"I told everybody he was gonna be a world champion," Washington says.

Crawford, who has his own gym in north Omaha, has long stopped training here, but CW Boxing Club is where it all began. Where, for the longest time, few outside Omaha even knew his name. Back then, managers and promoters told Crawford if he wanted the best for his career, he'd have to leave this place. Not only did he stay, but he surrounded himself with mostly people who also started here. And for years, all of them have waited for a fight like this.

For most of Crawford's career, the politics of prizefighting kept him from big fights. He was caught in between the cold wars promoters have among themselves. Crawford's unique talent was evident; a fighter with supreme intelligence who was also athletic enough to switch from orthodox to southpaw in the middle of rounds. But without opportunities to fight the best, it was difficult to prove how truly special he was. In the Canelo bout, he finally had an opportunity, at age 37, to take part in the kind of fight he'd been waiting for. He'd won titles as junior welterweight and welterweight, but this was a superfight, a battle between athletes that before it even began felt like a battle between legends.

"Let me show you something," Washington tells me.

I follow him as he walks through a maze of walls that, just like everything in his gym, he has built with his own hands. He turns a corner, takes a few steps then stops to stare at something else he has built.

"I call this his historical wall," Washington says, staring at what looks like a secular shrine to Crawford, the prizefighter who made it out of here. It's photographs and newspaper clippings from when he was an amateur and a young professional. It includes a framed sheet of paper that's labeled "Team Crawford." Beneath it are the small portrait photos of nine men with Crawford at the top. Each is accompanied by a single sentence explaining how many years they were also at CW Boxing Gym.

Washington built it to show everyone what's possible. The oldest photo of Crawford is from when he was just a kid and learning to box. Young Crawford stands in a fighter's pose, his right hand ready to jab while his left one is ready to attack. He's wearing a white tank top that's nearly slipping off his left shoulder and boxing gloves too big for his hands. His eyes look both innocent and intense.

Washington has two copies of that photo. One hangs in the gym he has run for nearly a half-century. The other copy is kept inside the Washington family Bible. It's the King James version, the cover is black and worn from daily reading. Though no one in the family knows exactly when they got it, they know it's older than the photograph it protects.

"I always knew he would be a world champion," Washington says again.

"CAN WE TURN OFF the air conditioner?" Canelo asks in Spanish.

He stands in the middle of a boxing ring at UFC GYM in Reno, Nevada, looking up at a vent blowing cold air through his red hair. He has phrased it as a polite question but everyone knows it's more of a demand. It's three weeks till fight night. The biggest fight of the year. The most watched fight of his career.

For the past dozen years, Canelo has been the face of prizefighting. Grown from a teenager marketed as Mexico's next great fighter to a global brand, his name sells everything from tacos to luxury menswear. His business manager, Richard Schaefer, is certain Canelo will soon be a billionaire.

"Thank you," Canelo says to no one in particular when he feels the air conditioner go off.

"This ring is smaller," Eddy Reynoso, his trainer, says.

"Yes," Canelo answers as he begins to warm up.

Just as he can't risk catching a cold, he can't risk pulling a muscle. If his fight against Crawford -- called everything from the "Fight of the Century" to "Once In A Lifetime" -- is postponed, it will jeopardize hundreds of millions of dollars. It will risk one of the handful of fights Canelo has left in him.

"They just put it up," Canelo says of the ring.

It sits atop the space usually reserved for group classes, inside the gym that's closed to its members because Canelo's here. "We deeply apologize for the inconvenience," a paper taped to the gym's glass door reads.

When Canelo starts to skip rope, the 40 or so people in the gym watch. When he moves from one corner of the ring to the other, everyone's eyes and cameras follow. It's the same when he moves to the heavy bag and when he's done and walks back to the locker room in a sweat-stained shirt.

"I'll be right back," he says. "I'm just going to change into a clean shirt."

Canelo has reached a level of fame impossible to escape. It's why he goes by a single name. It's also why for the past two years, he has moved his training camp about an hour from here, up in Sierra Nevada mountains. The elevation helps his lungs but more importantly, the isolation gets rid of some distractions that come from being the sun at the center of prizefighting's sometimes treacherous universe.

Canelo's Mexican heritage plays no small role in that. The "boxing is dead" stereotype has always been wrong. It's more that, in this country, boxing has largely become a Latino -- mostly Mexican -- sport.

"This will be among the most important fights I've had," Canelo tells me. He has returned from the locker room wearing a purple-colored shirt with the "No Boxing No Life" logo that's part of his brand. "I think it'll be my biggest."

Beyond that, outside the ring, it will be his most important and biggest fight because it will stream to Netflix's more than 300 million-plus global subscribers, and if nothing else, that increases the spectacle. It will be Canelo's most important and biggest fight because despite the disadvantages he'll face, Crawford can win.

The most important and the biggest. Because as he moves toward the end of his career, nothing hurts Canelo as an individual, prizefighter and brand, more than losing.

THERE'S A HISTORICAL MARKER on Reno's E. 4th Street, about a 10-minute drive from where Canelo held his media workout. A couple of blocks north of the Truckee River, it's surrounded by cheap motels and mechanic shops. To stand there on a hot late afternoon in late August, is to stand on the site of maybe the country's most important prizefight. On July 4, 1910, Jack Johnson, boxing's first Black heavyweight champion, faced Jim Jeffries. Their fight was filled with racial tension in a country still trying to find itself in the remnants of its Gilded Age that brought immense wealth for a few and extreme poverty for many others.

The fight was in Reno because the Governor of California said San Francisco couldn't host it. Prizefighting corrupted public morals, he argued. He also worried what might happen if Johnson won. If the Fight of the Century took place in California, he encouraged the Attorney General to arrest anyone involved.

Reno had a station on the Southern Pacific Railroad, and because the mining industry was struggling, politicians figured prizefighting would help Nevada's economy.

In boxing's infancy, prizefights were held in secret locations -- in brothels and backrooms of bars, in middle-of-nowhere fields, and sometimes in the dried riverbanks of the U.S. and Mexico border. All of that changed with the 1897 fight between James J. Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons. About a half-hour's drive from Reno, there's a historical marker for that fight too. It's next to a leaky sprinkler box in the parking lot between the Carson City jail and the sheriff's office.

With two weeks to prepare for Johnson-Jeffries, a wooden amphitheater was quickly built. On the day of the fight, more than 20,000 people witnessed what area newspapers called The Fight of the Century. It took place in a middle point between where the country was and where it was going. Nearly six years before, Theodore Roosevelt won a second presidential term and further involved the country in global politics. Six years after it, the U.S. surpassed the British Empire as the world's largest economic power. The country was in the early phases of what would evolve into the American Century. It embraced the optimism that came with viewing itself as exceptional and having unmatched cultural, economic and political power across the world.

Under the hot Nevada sun, Johnson beat Jeffries to a bloody mess. In the 15th round, Jeffries, the undefeated favorite who'd never been knocked down, fell to the floor several times. The crowd, most of whom were there to see Jeffries win and reestablish a white man as boxing's heavyweight champion, began to yell for the fight's end. When the inevitable was near, Jeffries' corner ran into the ring to stop the beating. "No Jack, don't hit him anymore," Jeffries' manager yelled.

The Fight of the Century ended, and fans exited the arena in stunned silence. A source of Black pride and defiance against racial oppression, Johnson's win was described by the Reno Evening Gazette as "the scene of the greatest tragedy the roped arena has ever known." Soon after it ended, from the West Coast to East Coast and every place in between, the country's first national race riot began, but that label is incorrect. It was white on Black violence as payback for Johnson's win.

In Walla Walla, Washington, a Black man was thrown to the floor and kicked in the head and body. In Omaha, two Black men were shot inside a pool hall after an argument over the fight. In New York, a Black man was hanged from a light post. And there were many others. At least 20 people were killed and hundreds more injured. There was even a rumor that Johnson had been shot while riding the train out of town.

The wooden amphitheater has long been destroyed along with most of the surrounding buildings. The last of the 20,000 people who attended the fight died decades ago. Among the last physical reminders is a plot of land with a historical marker that's beaten and bruised. It has been written on, scratched, and smudged with ink. Only half of the letters are visible in what used to read "The Fight of the Century."

Today, the place that was once the center of the world's attention is a scrap yard.

"WE AMERICANS ARE UNHAPPY."

That was Henry R. Luce's opening sentence for his editorial published in the Feb. 17, 1941 issue of Life magazine.

"We are not happy about America. We are not happy about ourselves in relation to America. We are nervous -- or gloomy -- or apathetic. As we look out at the rest of the world we are confused; we don't know what to do."

With that began Luce's 6,500-word plea to his readers. As the co-founder of Time and Life magazines, and founder of Fortune and Sports Illustrated magazines, he used his powerful media empire to persuade. With World War II ongoing and the U.S. not fully involved yet, Luce wanted his readers -- powerful politicians, businessmen and industrialists among them -- to embrace a future in which the U.S. was the global power.

"The 20th Century is the American Century," he wrote. For that to work, Luce said there had to be a worldwide devotion "to great American ideals." That meant free economic determinism and a world in which the U.S. was a good Samaritan, in part by sharing its engineers, doctors, teachers, and even entertainers. It was the sort of claim to power that included American technology, arts, and sports.

The American Century.

Just over seven months after Luce's editorial, Joe Louis, boxing's second Black heavyweight champion was on the cover of Time magazine. Except for presidential speeches, nothing drew larger crowds to the radio than fights.

"AGUA," John "Juanito" Ornelas says.

He's trying to catch his breath in the suffocating heat so his voice sounds like a whisper. And since he's wearing boxing gloves and his hands are useless except to fight, it also sounds as if he's begging for water. Over the sounds of his own heavy breathing, Gilbert Roybal, his trainer, can't hear Ornelas.

"Agua," the prizefighter repeats, this time louder.

"The news said this is the hottest weekend of the summer," Roybal says as he gives his fighter a squirt from a water bottle and then unties his gloves.

In any other setting, that'd be great news. It's the long Labor Day weekend and there are plenty of beaches nearby. But inside Dynamite Boxing Club -- in Chula Vista, behind a bar with a payday loan and liquor store nearby -- it feels like a world removed from the San Diego area's natural beauty. Instead of a Pacific Ocean breeze, three floor fans are set at their highest speed, pointed toward the gym doors kept open by an orange traffic cone and a sledgehammer with a 35-inch handle. Instead of the sweet coconut and vanilla smell of sunscreen, the pungent stench of sweat fills the air.

"We're doing it the hard way, and we wouldn't want it any other way," Roybal says. He and Ornelas take pride in knowing they've earned everything they have in this cruel business. For every boxer like Canelo or Crawford who earn millions, there are thousands who work full time just to afford to fight. Ornelas fights in the shadows of hotel ballrooms and small conventions halls, inside forgettable casinos in the middle of nowhere. Roybal practically has to beg sponsors for boxing gloves. They dream of fighting in a place like Las Vegas. On a night like Canelo-Crawford.

"We're going to shock the world," Ornelas says, talking of their upcoming fight against Mohammed Alakel. It'll be the first bout streamed on Netflix as part of the Canelo-Crawford undercard.

"I started boxing to honor my brother," Ornelas says while sitting on the ring apron. "He was a professional boxer. He was 10-1-1 when he got murdered in Tijuana."

Before he died, his brother, Pablo Armenta, would tell Ornelas about his boxing dreams. Ornelas listened as his older brother spoke of how he studied videos of past and present world champions and dreamed of becoming one of them. About wanting to fight on the biggest stages beneath Las Vegas' blinding lights.

"I'm trying to do what he always envisioned," he says. "This was always his dream."

THERE'S A BUILDING in the part of Las Vegas where the lights don't shine as bright and the artists write on walls. "Johnny Tocco's Boxing Gym" the sign says even though it has been closed to the public for about three years. Its windows are boarded shut and "Home of the World Champions" written above the entrance has begun to peel off. The mural of all the famous boxers who have trained there -- Sonny Liston, Marvin Hagler and Mike Tyson among them -- has begun to fade. And next to the door that once opened for fighters, someone has placed a sign asking if you've sinned today.

There's another building, about a mile and a half away, in the part of Las Vegas where the beautiful people play. It's a luxury resort and casino, the tallest occupiable building on The Strip, and at its very top it says "Fontainebleau." It's one of the newer buildings there, on top of the land that used to be the Algiers Hotel and what was first the Thunderbird, then the Silverbird, then El Rancho Hotel and Casino. Those closed, were imploded, and after the smoke and rubble cleared, Fontainebleau Las Vegas was built for $3.7 billion.

The first building is where yesterday's prizefighters used to train. They aren't there anymore. The second one is where -- at least for one week --you see the prizefighters of today. More at home in the first than the second, most of them look out of place, except for one.

CANELO STEPS OUT of the suicide doors of a black Rolls-Royce that has a thin red strip running along its side. He brushes his hands down his torso to straighten the white suit he wears without a shirt. He shakes hands with important people in suits much more conservative than his. They're the moneymen who make the fights happen. Their names are unknown to most but their faces hover in the background, reflecting off the dark sunglasses Canelo wears as he thanks them. He walks to the side entrance of the Fontainebleau Las Vegas.

"Viva Mexico, cab----s!" a man yells in Spanish from inside the south lobby of the hotel and casino hosting fight week for Canelo-Crawford. The crowd begins to cheer while Mexican flags wave from the second floor. Because he has been the other guy during this fight promotion, Crawford got the opposite reaction when he made his entrance 50 minutes earlier. His few supporters yelling, "And the new...!" were quickly drowned out by Canelo's fans.

"I love each and every one of you all," Crawford told the booing crowd, "but come Saturday, y'all gonna be crying." He said it with a smile and confidence particular to someone who has never lost a professional fight and are sure they never will.

"Ca-ne-lo! Ca-ne-lo!" the crowd cheers as the Mexican boxer walks down the red carpet. As the week progresses toward Saturday and Mexican Independence Day weekend, there is a growing excitement as casinos, hotels and sidewalks will become more crowded. Among the gathered are the old prizefighters; they're still remembered and called "Champ."

Canelo's face, name, logo and brand is everywhere. In the airport, on T-shirts worn by those who've traveled hours to get here, and on the biggest screens that illuminate the city in the Mojave Desert. The history of prizefighting is the history of searching for saviors. And not for the first time, the sport seems unsure whether it wants to crown champions or stage spectacles.

Sometimes, the biggest fights are a mix of both and feel like a holiday. James J. Corbett, the champion of Irish descent, fought Bob Fitzsimmons on St. Patrick's Day in 1897. Jim Jeffries, who was made out to be the "Great White Hope" lost to Jack Johnson on July 4 in 1910. And some of the most anticipated fights of this century, including Canelo's fights, happened over the holidays of Cinco de Mayo and Mexican Independence Day.

"Me-xi-co! Me-xi-co!" the crowd chants.

Canelo walks through the cameras flashes as hands reach out to touch him. Inside the Fontainebleau it feels like a different world than the old building just a mile and a half away. This is where the tourists come and over there is where the locals live and say the streets feel dead. Tourism is down and that has affected the local economy. The city of blinding lights has one of the country's highest unemployment rates. Some economists warn that what's happening in Las Vegas could be an early sign of an upcoming decline across the country.

Inside the Fontainebleau, which always smells of perfume and has a grand chandelier with thousands of crystal bowties, that concern feels exaggerated. But standing outside the old building that has become another of prizefighting's skeletons, it feels right, as if something has broken. Like Canelo versus Crawford might be the last big fight at the end of the American Century.

"IT SEEMS LIKE you've seen more important fights than anyone," I say to Jerry Izenberg as he shows me around his home office. Its walls are covered with framed photographs, mementos and awards from three-quarters of a century of work.

"I missed Cain and Abel," he says in his usual humor and thick New Jersey accent that hasn't faded in the 18 years since he has lived just outside of Las Vegas. "My camel died on the way to the arena," he adds.

At 95, he often jokes about his age. The term feels like from another time and place, but for 74 of those years, he has been what he calls a newspaperman, most of them for The Newark Star-Ledger (now known as NJ.com) in New Jersey. And as he leans on his walker, taking careful steps around his office, he talks of the sport he has watched and covered for most of his life.

The prizefight that turned him into a fan was the 1938 rematch between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling. It was also called the Fight of the Century, and 7-year-old Jerry listened to it on the radio.

"It was more than a fight, it was a historical event," Izenberg explains. Louis, who'd become the greatest boxer of his era, versus Schmeling, the German world champion used by Nazi propaganda as proof of Aryan supremacy. It was the first time many white Americans openly cheered for a Black man. As soon as Louis beat Schmeling, radios across Germany went dead. About 14 months later, it was the start of World War II. "Since he lost the fight, Hitler sent him to Crete as a paratrooper," Izenberg says of Schmeling.

Since then, Izenberg has seen and covered all of the big fights. Muhammad Ali versus Joe Frazier, Roberto Duran versus "Sugar" Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler versus Tommy Hearns, Mike Tyson versus Evander Holyfield, Floyd Mayweather Jr. versus Oscar De La Hoya.

The last of the so-called Fight of the Century that Izenberg covered in person was Manny Pacquiao versus Floyd Mayweather Jr. At 4.6 million buys, it was the highest-selling pay-per-view in boxing history. The fight was uneventful partly because of Pacquiao's injured shoulder. When it was over, several class-action lawsuits were filed because of it, alleging fraud by claiming organizers knew Pacquiao was injured. But with so much money at stake, the fight went on. That month, May 2015, Nevada's casinos made over a billion dollars from gambling.

Izenberg tells stories about the old and broken prizefighters who became his friends once the cruelest sport got rid of them. How Louis had to join the circus to make money -- at one point even fighting a kangaroo -- and still died broke, with Schmeling paying for his funeral. He calls Muhammad Ali one of the best friends he has ever had, says it hurt to watch him wither away from Parkinson's disease. He tells me Sonny Liston died mysteriously as a lonely and forgotten man living in Las Vegas. How back when it was easier for him to get around, Izenberg would visit Liston's grave in a noisy cemetery next to the Las Vegas airport.

"You ever miss being at the fights?" I ask.

"I miss being anywhere," Izenberg answers.

A younger version of himself would have been at the Canelo-Crawford weigh-ins, talking to boxers and their people, then getting dinner before the big fight. But instead of being there, he'll eat dinner at home with his wife and watch the fight from his couch.

After the fight, Izenberg will write his column the way he has done for decades. Though he retired some 18 years ago, he continues to work. "I'm the columnist emeritus. I write when I want to," he says. Apart from those columns, he has written 15 books and has a 16th on the way.

"My last book will be the death of American sports. It's greed," he explains. "Greed and stupidity and fraud and television making people into what they want. It's just ..."

He stops midsentence as if remembering how things used to be. How newspapermen like him once had as much access as they wanted because it was one of the only ways for boxers to sell themselves and their fights. How the biggest of those fights commanded the entire country's attention. Standing among all of those memories on his office walls, perhaps he's even thinking of how he's one of the last links to an era of prizefighting that doesn't exist anymore.

"It's..." Izenberg continues before he stops again. Another second of his long life passes by.

"Nothing is like it was."

ON THE EARLY EVENING of boxing's biggest event of the year, two boxers fight inside Allegiant Stadium. The doors have been opened for hours, but the stadium is mostly empty. Crawford and Canelo are a few hours off. Fighting out of the red corner is Mohammed Alakel. Juanito Ornelas was supposed to be in the blue corner, but he isn't there.

"It's a dirty business," Ornelas says.

Instead of preparing for what he thought was the opportunity of his life this week, he was in Temecula working construction. "I got a call saying, 'We've had a change of plan,'" he explains.

"What the f---?" Ornelas said.

A lawyer told him he could sue the promoter but that would ruin his career. Or he could just take the money they offered him to be replaced. (There has been no official word from TKO.)

"I took the money," Ornelas explains. It was nothing compared to what he really wanted. To fight in Las Vegas for himself, his family, and the memory of his brother. "What else could I do?" he asks. His voice is a mix of anger, confusion and hurt. "I'm not fighting and I've been away from my family and I wasn't working. I needed compensation for that s---."

It all feels especially cruel; getting a taste of prizefighting at the highest level then, just as he was savoring its flavor, getting it ripped from his mouth. He thought he'd gotten the opportunity of a lifetime only to discover he -- the most working class of boxers -- was completely replaceable.

On the day of the fight, Ornelas wandered around Las Vegas. It was the last place he wanted to be. He was there with his friends and family who had made travel plans to see him fight. Some of them wore fight shirts that had Ornelas' name on the back.

Alakel beat Travis Kent Crawford (no relation to Terence), the man who replaced Ornelas, in a unanimous decision in a lightweight bout. Ornelas didn't watch. But he imagined himself in that ring. Imagined the millions watching from home.

THE WORLD'S TECHNOLOGICAL advancements can be traced alongside how the biggest fights have been broadcast and consumed. The 1897 fight between Corbett and Fitzsimmons was captured on film. The original recording, using a camera called the Veriscope, was over two hours long and is considered the first ever feature film.

It played for five weeks in New York City, four in Boston and nine more in Chicago. Then Buffalo, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh before it moved west to San Francisco and Portland. It later played in London. Now, only about 20 minutes of the original film exists. What remains is part of the National Film Registry.

Before that film, anyone who wanted to know the results of important fights had to either stand outside a place that had a telegram to hear them shouted out or wait to read it in the newspaper. After that film, anyone who wanted to see those results, paid to watch it in a theater.

The film attracted those who normally wouldn't attend a prizefight and gave the moneymen and prizefighters a new way to make money. With their faces in theaters, some boxers became celebrities. The biggest among them would even tour the country as stage actors in between fights. In his book, "Fight Pictures," Dan Streible says because of his presence on screen, Jack Johnson was essentially "the first Black movie star." That changed with The Fight of the Century.

Soon after Johnson beat Jeffries, there were renewed calls to ban the sport and theaters canceled showings of their fight. Two years later, in what law professor Barak Y. Orbach calls "one of the most disturbing waves of movie censorship in American history," Congress passed the Sims Act. The transportation of prizefighting films across state lines was outlawed.

After film, came radio. On July 2, 1921, eight months after the country's first commercial station began, Jack Dempsey versus Georges Carpentier -- also called The Fight of the Century -- was the first big prizefight to be broadcast. This was a month before professional baseball was broadcast on the radio. In Dempsey, prizefighting had a star, even bigger than Babe Ruth during the 1920s. He was the first athlete on the cover of Time magazine.

From telegrams to newspapers, then from film to radio, from television to closed-circuit broadcasts then on to pay-per-view. During their times, each of them were the height of media and technological advancement.

In 2018, streaming became part of this progression with Canelo as its face. He signed a $365 million contract with the streaming platform DAZN. At the time, it was the largest contract for a professional athlete.

CANELO STANDS in the red corner, Crawford in the blue. There's nothing in sports like the anticipation before the opening bell. Butterflies charge against stomach walls, palms feel slippery and the chest begins to tighten. For months, the boxers and the moneymen have been building to this moment.

It has been press tours and media workouts from Saudi Arabia to New York to Nevada. It has been the Netflix documentary team following each camp for months. All the music, and lights, and pictures with celebrities who want to be close to this. Even the spectacle of the ring walks are done. All of that gets stripped away. The bell rings and we're left with two men fighting.

There's a moment in all fights when you can see the boxers fully understand who their opponent is. For Crawford, that moment came in the middle rounds. That's when Canelo's size, power and strength -- which were supposed his advantages -- were something Crawford could feel, rather than something he could only imagine by studying film.

What Crawford found was that Canelo's size wasn't insurmountable. After fighting parts of the first few rounds on his backfoot, as the fight progressed, Crawford started becoming more aggressive. If Canelo's power and strength were there, they weren't enough of a deterrent. Not when the punches to the face came slow enough for Crawford to protect himself.

"He's gonna come with the wide s---," Brian McIntyre told Crawford in his corner at the end of the eighth round. McIntyre, whom everyone calls BoMac, is Crawford's trainer. On that framed piece of printed paper Carl Washington keeps inside his gym, BoMac's name is listed just beneath Crawford. "He go wide, you go to the body," BoMac continued. Crawford's corner could see Canelo was getting frustrated and losing composure. That he'd become more aggressive at the expense of his technique.

As the fight progressed and Crawford asserted himself, Canelo's frustrations showed more. He reacted to some punches with a look of disbelief. He saw them coming and reacted the way he'd always done -- rolling his head and shoulders away -- but somehow, they still landed. It was confusing because it was never supposed to be this way.

Yes, he knew Crawford was a dangerous opponent, but no more than some of the others he'd met before, especially not when he was fighting outside his weight class. Crawford was supposed to be more of a placeholder. The name of an opponent slotted between Canelo's Cinco de Mayo fights for 2025 and 2026. He was supposed to be someone who'd wilt under Canelo's power, both inside and outside the ring. Someone, who like many of Canelo's opponents, looked more thankful for the opportunity and money that came from fighting him than anything else.

And yet, toward the end of the fight, as Crawford punished the face of boxing, it had morphed away from the pageantry and show that comes from events like these. Until now, it had been a promise between a great fighter and a loyal fan base that he would represent them and carry their flag. A reason to watch surrounded by family and friends because if this was one of the few places we got a chance to show how great we can be, then I suppose we'll just have to take pride in fighting. But then it turned into something primitive and simple. Now it was something closer to the hopes of someone like Carl Washington, or the desire that comes from the pursuit of dreams greater than just your own, like with Juanito Ornelas.

The best of all prizefights feel bigger than that. They represent ideas about the most prodigious of our powers, as nations and people and culture and communities. They call us because they feel like light and heat unto themselves.

Crawford began to dominate. To control that violent space between his torso and Canelo's. To slip the jab and land his glove to the face. Crawford began to realize there was nothing Canelo could do to hurt him. Once that happened, it became what all great fights are: a struggle to defend what mattered most to Crawford and take away what mattered most to Canelo. It became a story in which Canelo failed to continue being what he'd been so far and Crawford transformed into the very thing that for years only he and a few around him could see. That if all things were even close to equal, there wasn't a man in the world who could beat Crawford.

"Breathe, breathe," Reynoso instructed Canelo right before the final round. It's difficult to know if his calm voice came from not trying to panic or from being as surprised as everyone who watched in Allegiant Stadium and around the world. Because even Crawford's supporters would admit, it wasn't supposed to look this easy.

"Throw with all your power," Reynoso urged.

By the start of the 12th round, it was too late.

MORE THAN ANY OTHER SPORT, prizefighting lends itself to conspiratorial thinking. It's the structure of the sport and its dependence on those it sees as its savior. It's the moneymen in the background and all they can lose. It's the promoters and sponsors and even the state where these fights happen. From Uber drivers to the invisible workers who clean up after everyone, from those who sell bootlegged T-shirts of Canelo's brand to the tour guides at the Hoover Dam, from those who sell sex and drugs to those who perform magic that bridges how things are and how they appear, it's good business for everyone whenever a superfight is in town.

This side of prizefighting is so prominent, there's an entire genre of film dedicated to it. Storylines of the boxer who never got the shot he needed or the one who got it and then it was taken away. The boxer who was supposed to win but then was robbed by judges or the boxer who had it all and then it was gone. All of it symbolic of the struggles of life. That there are a few who get all the breaks and benefit from the inequities, while all the others feel as if their break will never come.

Will Crawford get robbed? At the end of the fight, that was the only question that remained. In a just world, the winner was clear. But then again, in a just world, the circumstances aren't there for prizefighting to exist.

TERENCE CRAWFORD is on one knee, near the center of the ring. His face looks down toward the canvas and his right hand is pressed against his brow to cover his eyes. Around him is the team he has had his entire career, just about all of them started in that boxing gym in downtown Omaha. And because few things show the spectacle of a prizefight better than when he's there, Michael Buffer's voice is heard across every part of the stadium and in the homes of those watching around the world.

"The winner, by unanimous decision," Buffer says. "The fighting pride of Omaha, Nebraska, USA. And new! ..."

Crawford's body shakes slightly as there's a controlled chaos all around him. Inside the ring, it's the producing men who tell everyone where to stand so their cameramen can show it to millions around the globe. It's the moneymen and the cornermen from each side, Canelo's is much quieter than they expected. Outside the ring, it's the biggest crowd that has ever been inside Allegiant Stadium -- 70,482. Even more people than when it hosted the Super Bowl less than two years ago. From the stands, small sections begin to yell where they come from. "Omaha! Omaha!" And for the first time all week, those voices and cheers from Crawford's people aren't drowned out by all the others.

"Give me some f---ing room y'all, damn!" BoMac yells from inside the ring as cameras start to move in on him and his fighter, and away from Canelo.

Crawford had come from the shadows of the forgotten, flyover country, and won. His place in boxing history had changed within an hour of real time. He'd reached that place where if he never fought again, people would remember his name long after he was gone. The story became how even if he wasn't the face, Crawford had just done the sort of things only a small handful of fighting men have ever done. He'd done the remarkable. He had every disadvantage and still won.

When Crawford returns to his feet, his eyes are wet and red and there's a look of strain across his face. It looks like part anger and part relief. Anger that it took this long for others to see what he always knew. That he was better than not just Canelo, but everyone he's ever fought. Relief that he was right. Just as being a prizefighter is having to convince yourself you can't be beat. Sometimes what's required is to keep working, even when no cameras are watching, toward something that might not come.

With all eyes on him now, as he becomes the spectacle, Crawford takes a few deep breaths and exhales. Then, the best fighter of his generation -- the best since Mayweather retired and the only man in this era to be undisputed champion in three different weight classes -- is covered with the title belts he just won. There's not much of an expression on his face. No moment of surprise, because unlike most people watching, he always expected this.

"SOMETIMES YOU TRY and your body can't go," Canelo says.

He speaks in English at the postfight news conference a couple of hours after he lost. A few years ago, he began speaking the language because it was good for the brand. Canelo growing his English proficiency in public had the added effect of making him more human. Few can relate to someone who can have just about anything, but everyone knows what it's like to struggle at something.

"That's my frustration," Canelo continues. He's processing how for the first time in over 14 years, he isn't a world champion. He sits between Richard Schaefer and Eddy Reynoso who looks like someone who has been smoking cigarettes for hours outside a hospital emergency room. The entire mood of the news conference is somber. All three of them sitting behind an empty table where his title belts would be.

"My body can't go anymore," Canelo says again as if he's talking to himself more than anyone else. All it takes is the reflexes to slow a fraction of a second for an opponent's punch to connect and your own punches to miss. That fraction of a second is the difference between a win and a loss. A blink of the eye, and it's gone.

As Canelo speaks of the body that has made him powerful and wealthy, he sounds as if he has been forced -- beaten, really -- into contemplating his own mortality. As the face of boxing, he was in a space few fighters ever occupy. But now he has arrived in that same harsh place where all who've ever fought get to. Even before this loss, he knew the end was near. But a few hours ago, he thought he'd have a greater say when it was done. Now, talking out of a beaten face, it all feels different.

"Right now, I just want to enjoy my family," Canelo says. Besides that, he isn't sure what comes next. He'll take a few weeks off, then gather with his team to discuss the future. They'll talk of what comes next for a 35-year-old who feels betrayed by his body.

TO WALK THE STREETS of Las Vegas on a Sunday morning after a big fight, is to see the invisible people cleaning up after those who check out of their hotels with their swollen eyes, smell of alcohol and return to where they're from. It's to see a new group of tourists turnover because there's always something that comes next. And since the Raiders will play on "Monday Night Football," there's no sign of Canelo versus Crawford outside of Allegiant Stadium. Just as there aren't any on the hotel and casino neon signs that are impossible to miss.

By Sunday morning, you can see Canelo has started to fade away. His face, name, logo and brand are no longer as omnipresent as they were the day before. It was always going to end this way because with or without Canelo, the machine continues. It reminds you that if even Canelo is this easily replaceable, then the ruthlessness of prizefighting is an inextricable part of this country.

For the moment, Crawford's face is more visible than ever before. In the span of a day, he went from someone who most thought had too many disadvantages to win, to someone whose name is mentioned among the best who have ever fought. But he'll turn 38 in a few days. His shot was too long in coming. He probably won't become the face of the sport. He might never fight another superfight. He'll have this night. This feeling the morning after. But soon.

Prizefighting will have to find and attach itself to someone else.