Terence Crawford: The 'million dollar baby' who beat gun and belt buckle

Terence Crawford’s tale can be told on this street. A dusty avenue in Nebraska, in one of the state’s most stricken suburbs, surrounded by nothing but the vast cornfields of middle America. When Crawford was born here 31 years ago, fists raised in the air, his father said he would be a fighter, a “million dollar baby.” His mother, Debra, said he “wouldn’t be s***.”

To Debra “love was pain”. From as young as six years old, when Crawford fought in the back alleys which intersect these boarded-up homes, Debra would drag her son home and beat him with a belt buckle. When that failed to deter him, she offered those same kids $5 to beat him up.

Tucked behind his childhood home is the boxing gym Crawford first stepped into when he was just seven years old, where he burst into tears upon taking his first punch.

But two months ago, Larimore Street was a very different sight. The stilts of Crawford’s childhood home reverberated to the beat of a backyard barbecue. The embers of oak-wood, drifting under the sun’s glare, reflected in the dark racing stripe of his orange Dodge Challenger.

Young children charged around maniacally, all portioned the same penance of promise as Crawford, but there was no fighting. The street where the world champion was filled with rage and yearned for the love of his mother was being renamed in his honour - Terence “Bud” Crawford Street.

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In 2006, with a towel draped around his neck, Terence Crawford stared into the camera after being defeated in the final of the national Golden Gloves amateur boxing tournament, insisting that he would be back. But on the brink of qualifying for the 2008 Olympics, he was outpointed again and decided to turn professional. "Look out for me," he said when asked what the future held.

But Crawford was still tethered to his street-fighting past. He played dice in the evening with some neighbourhood gangsters in North Omaha while training for his first professional fight. As he returned to his car and he counted his cash, he was shot from point-blank range just behind the ear, but the bullet somehow ricocheted off his skull. The doctor told Crawford he was lucky. His uncle, a pastor, told him he was blessed. “I guess it probably did something to his head,” Debra dryly told ESPN, because that was the last day Crawford spent with that crowd.

Crawford boxed in the early afternoons in front of empty Las Vegas arenas as the punters outside scavenged the strip until the main events began. But after notching up a number of wins, he was called to California as a sparring partner for two-weight world champion Timothy Bradley Jr. Usually paid to be practice cushions like a rugby tackle shield, Crawford went toe-to-toe with the champion, who pulled him aside as he left. “You’re gonna be a world champion, trust me”. From high up in the San Bernardino mountains, words about the fighter from the middle of nowhere flooded the tributaries angling down from Big Bear Lake.

He was offered the opportunity to face Breidis Prescott as a late-replacement and with only three days to prepare, Crawford comprehensively defeated the Colombian who had knocked out Amir Khan in one round five years before. Over the course of the next year, he worked his way into the position of mandatory challenger for the WBO Lightweight World Championship and came to the partisan cauldron of Glasgow to take on Scottish boxing icon, Ricky Burns - the first time in Crawford’s professional career that he had fought overseas.

Crawford inflicted a ten round drubbing on the hapless Scotsman, fulfilling the prediction made by his father upon his birth, and Nebraska had its first world champion for a century.

Crawford has fought ten times since claiming that first world title against Burns. First, he moved up to the 140lbs weight division where he defeated the undefeated Ukrainian Viktor Postol and Namibian Julius Indongo to become boxing’s first undisputed champion for a decade before moving up another division, this time to face Jeff Horn. Many questioned if he may be too small to take on the Australian who had just defeated Manny Pacquiao, but again Crawford won convincingly and surpassed Bradley by becoming a three-weight world champion.

Despite now headlining those glitzy Vegas cards where he was once but a sidenote, Crawford has fought five of those ten bouts back in Nebraska. Crawford has five children with long-time girlfriend Alindra who he dotes on every day after scaling the straw-strewn Omaha hills and he's opened a gym in the heart of the neighbourhood where he grew up and the street he's never truly left. “These kids look at Terence like he’s a God," says his trainer Brian McIntyre.

Just a short walk from where Crawford once defended himself from Debra’s belt, he defends his own in the city’s stadium in the early hours of Sunday morning and the ‘million-dollar baby’ will fight for three and a half times that amount.