"He's a Hall of Famer, so of course we would love that fight. As far as if and when, that's on Manny Pacquiao and his camp. I mean, we were supposedly in the running the last time and I seen an article that came out and his advisor said we were never in the running. We won't sit around and cross our fingers and hopes that he picks us. If he picks us, we'll be ready. All we need is 6 weeks and we will be ready. We ready to move on to other things if Pacquiao doesn't go through. Pacquiao is not going to make us or break us," stated Red Spikes, assistant trainer of undefeated unified jr. welterweight champion Terence Crawford, who shared the team's thoughts on a showdown with 8-division former world champion Manny Pacquiao. Check it out!
PC: The Pacquiao fight seems to be the fight everyone wants to see Terence fight next. Terence says it doesn't matter; Pacquiao's trainer seems reluctant. What would you like to see happen next?
RS: Shit, of course we would like to fight Pacquiao. That's a legacy defining fight. That's a great win. He's a Hall of Famer, so of course we would love that fight. As far as if and when, that's on Manny Pacquiao and his camp. I mean, we were supposedly in the running the last time and I seen an article that came out and his advisor said we were never in the running. We won't sit around and cross our fingers and hopes that he picks us. If he picks us, we'll be ready. All we need is 6 weeks and we will be ready. We ready to move on to other things if Pacquiao doesn't go through. Pacquiao is not going to make us or break us. If he wants that fight, then we'll be ready, and if he doesn't, we'll move on to the next one. It's just like Terence says in his interviews; it's up to Bob, it's up to us, and Team Pacquiao. I mean, shit, it'll be a great fight. It would be a great fight.
PC: Freddie Roach just literally had an opportunity to see Terence up close and personal. You guys were just across the ring from him and he has since said that he would advise Pacquiao not to fight Terence right now. Do you feel that's a situation where Terence may have looked too good for his own good?
RS: Well, hey, that's our thing now; we want to put out an A performance every time. Of course Terence did an excellent job in this last fight and we still got critics. We still got people saying he's boring and this and all he did was run. You can't please everybody. We starting to get that Mayweather treatment now. It's like we have been watching Mayweather this whole time coming up, watching his interviews, and it's like, okay, now we see what he's been talking about. We see what the media is like and certain people is like and it's funny to see everything come full circle.
PC: One of the things that bothers me, and Tevin Farmer actually tweeted about this, a fighter gets defeated pretty decisively, he says, "I came to fight and he was running," yet there were knockdowns and that fighter was hurt a few times.
RS: The art of boxing is to hit and not get hit, you know what I mean. When Terence retires, he wants to be able to play with his kids and play with his grandkids and understand and remember what he did as a fighter. He don't want to get in that golden age and not remember his accomplishments. Are the fans there to help pay for your bills when you're in your 60's? I mean, God willing we wouldn't need that, but I'm just saying a lot of these warriors that I see in Vegas or out of town at fights, you see them and they look like they never had a dime. Where are all of these fans that were hooraying them when they were in there taking punches. You gotta fight for yourself. And the art of boxing is to hit and not get hit. There will be critics anyway. If he would have went in there and knocked him out, they would have said that Postol was overrated. It don't even matter, they going to find a way to hate.
PC: Al Haymon and Bob seems to have come to some sort of mutual existence. After the Postol fight, a lot of fans on social media was saying no fighter would benefit more from this than Terence Crawford. I'm sure you are hoping to see Terence in there with some PBC fighters.
RS: Oh, absolutely! I hope it comes to a point where Bob and Al can come together and make some of these fights that need to be made. The boxing public deserves it, we deserve it, and when you look down the landscape of possible opponents from Top Rank, other than Pacquiao, who is there at 140? Because what they want to do and what they want to say is we fight these number one contenders and mandatories and we get flack for that. They are going to try and rush us to move up and Terence makes 140 comfortably. We want him to grow into 147 and then fight these guys when his body develops there. I mean, 3 weeks before the fight, he was 148 pounds. It's just like one of them situations how they want Floyd to move up to fight Triple G and shit like that and he walk around at 155. He is 155 pounds every day, so what do you think his natural training weight is when he's been in the gym sweating and working hard? So how the hell is he going to put on 5 pounds and get a little slower or whatever. It's just a lot of this stuff don't make sense. There are a lot of double standards out there and it's crazy. But of course, to answer your initial question, PBC got a pretty good roster of guys at junior welterweight and welterweight, so of course we want to take on those challenges. We don't turn anything down; no one down. After Postol beat Matthysse, people were saying Terence won't fight him. That's just what it is. I would love to see it. I would have loved to see it a few years ago when you had Danny Garcia at 140, Lamont Peterson at 140, and Devon Alexander and Broner was at 140. It was a nice little roster they had over there at PBC at 140 and we would have loved to had some of them fights over there. I just hope that we can make some things happen now.
PC: Congratulations on the win again. Best of luck to y'all moving forward, man. I always enjoy watching Terence and the product you guys put out. Is there anything else you want to add before I let you go?
RS: Thank you brother. We are going to call the shots in this game as much as we can. That's something else we learned from Floyd Mayweather. You want the power to make decisions and how do we do that? Just keep winning! You keep winning, looking spectacular, and the public is going to demand you.
[ Follow Percy Crawford on Twitter @MrLouis1ana ]