I was shot in the head and sentenced to 90 days in jail – now I’m fighting for the undisputed welterweight world titles

Terence Crawford was seven years old when he started boxing at the CW Boxing Club in Omaha, Nebraska.

If he was blessed with a natural ability not only to fight but to read and time his opponents, his toughness and resilience was nurtured by watching his parents’ consistent arguments, and by his mother Debra, then a heavy drinker, beating him.

Mikey Williams/Top Rank

Instagram: @tbudcrawford

“I got hit with a belt, a toy, a stick, extension cord, a switch off a tree, whatever,” he once said. “At the same time, my pain tolerance went up. It came to the point where it built toughness. Yeah, it hurt, but I wasn’t scared. I knew what was coming. Wasn’t nothing I wasn’t prepared for.

“I always have the ability to believe in myself when nobody else does. [Later, aged 12] I just look at her like, ‘Pshh, that don’t hurt’. I grabbed the belt, tell her, ‘You ain’t hitting me no more’.” 

Crawford, whose willingness to fight led to his expulsion from five schools, would therefore vow never to smoke or drink. He instead felt in his most natural environment at the CW, alongside the many Crips, Bloods, Gangster Disciples and Insane Vice Lords from north Omaha who also trained there. One of the latter, Brian McIntyre – increasingly known as “BoMac”, and who once put someone through a glass door and shot at a member of the police force – not only once sparred Crawford’s uncle Michael, but would become his professional trainer.

In the same way that he was exposed to tough men at the CW, the young Crawford was surrounded by tough women at home. In addition to his mother there were his older sisters Shawntay and Letisha, his grandmother Velma, and his aunt Jacki, who served time in a state prison for possession of cocaine and struggled with schizophrenia and addiction before dying of cancer in 2003.

At 17 Crawford, a lightweight, sparred McIntyre to help him prepare for the 375 lbs Eric “Butterbean” Esch. By then he was also known outside of Omaha as the young fighter who threatened to kill Gary Russell Jnr while training for the Pan American Games. 

He was a 4-0 professional when, on August 30, 2008, Crawford – amid a fight between Crips and Bloods; despite growing up in Crip territory he has never spoken spoken of a commitment to either – had an altercation with a bouncer that led to him being sprayed with Mace by police. In the early hours he then went to play street dice and, while he sat counting his winnings, a bullet flew through the back window of his car.

By that bullet first travelling through the windshield of his 1986 Ford Cutlass it flew into Crawford’s head and then around his skull instead of through it. Despite the wound it created and the blood he was losing, he proved capable of driving himself to Creighton University Medical Center. Above all else, as he recognised, he was lucky to be alive. 

Three years later Crawford was recruited by Timothy Bradley – then the undefeated WBO and WBC super lightweight champion and preparing for one of his defining fights, against Devon Alexander – as a sparring partner and he outboxed him. Bradley would go on to record victory over Alexander and to reach the International Boxing Hall of Fame, but had seen enough in Crawford to recognise that Crawford, too, would become a world champion.

Instagram: @tbudcrawford

The chance for him to do so was presented to him in March 2014 in Glasgow, at the age of 26, against the popular WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns. With relative ease against so proven a fighter, he proceeded to prove Bradley right.

It was around the time of that victory that Crawford was shot at – the occasion in 2008 wasn’t the first – for what remains the last time. He had just pulled up in a black car when someone supposedly looking for his cousin – who was also driving a black car – started shooting. Not only was ‘Bud’ again fortunate to the extent that he wasn’t even hit, he had also recently removed, from his car, unlicensed guns he had owned when police showed up and put him in handcuffs.

The car that had been shot at – his 1984 Chevrolet Monte Carlo – therefore required the attention of the body shop Extreme Custom Fleet and Auto Spa. According to Crawford he asked only for a routine paint job but his car remained there for months, partly because the owner was adding extras, and he was unhappy that he was being billed $2,500 and at the time that it was taking. 

On April 14, 2016, he therefore showed up with three friends and, told that his car wouldn’t be released to him until the remaining $1,350 had been paid – Crawford had paid $1,150 in advance – according to the shop owner, in an incident captured on a surveillance video, he lowered it from the hydraulic lift, tied a rope to it, and took it away. 

The police who investigated say that the lift remained stuck in the “on” position and became so hot that an estimated cost of over $3,000 in damage unfolded. Crawford was found guilty of disorderly conduct and damage to property, and then sentenced to 90 days in jail. When he appealed his prison sentence was overturned, but his two years’ probation remained. 

In the days before he was first sentenced he stopped John Molina Jnr to defend his WBO and WBC super lightweight titles, and days before his appeal succeeded he stopped Julius Indongo to also win the IBF and WBA titles to therefore become the undisputed champion of the world. In between Molina Jnr and Indongo came a further victory over Felix Diaz, demonstrating, like the most natural-born fighters, an ability to compartmentalise even the prospect of time behind bars.

Ryan Hafey/PBC

By defeating Indongo, Crawford became only the second male fighter – the first was the great Bernard Hopkins, with victory over Oscar De La Hoya in 2004 – to unify all four world titles. He immediately moved to welterweight, becoming the WBO champion with victory over Jeff Horn, ensuring that a fight with Errol Spence would grow in demand.

And this Saturday night, five years after moving up to 147 lbs, Crawford and Spence will clash for the undisputed welterweight world titles in arguably the biggest fight that boxing has to offer.

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