WBO welterweight champion Terence Crawford (36-0, 27 KOs) had hard time on Saturday night in stopping mandatory Egidijus Kavaliauskas (21-1-1, 17 KOs) in the 9th round at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Crawford looked vulnerable at times, but still managed to show why is he so popular in the USA.
The champion dropped Kavaliauskas in the 7th round with a series of hard shots. Two rounds later, Crawford knocked his opponent down again. The time of the stoppage was at 0:44 of round 9.
A pound-for-pound star and an undefeated challenger.
What else did you expect? We've got a firefight in The Garden!!#CrawfordMachine | ESPN pic.twitter.com/meaeWFM8bo
— Top Rank Boxing (@trboxing) December 15, 2019
Crawford had problems with Kavaliauskas’s right hand power the entire fight.
The right hand is the Kryptonite to a southpaw, and wouldn’t have been hit with those shots if he were fighting smart out of the orthodox stance, writes boxingnews24.com.