THE REDEEMER
done what no man before him had – he’d become the first male boxer in the four-belt era to be undisputed in two weight classes. He didn’t just win – he dominated. As the referee stepped in, Omaha erupted. I could hear it through my phone, through my window, in my soul. Fireworks. Cheers. Pride. Bud had done what Nebraska football hadn’t in decades – he united us. That day he became a household name and restored respect back to a city rich in greatness. One day, not long after the Spence fight, while we were RC racing at Bud Crawford Speedway, I asked Bud what made him great. He said it’s his team. Being part of what many called the best team in college football (the 1995 Nebraska program), I knew there are many parts that make up a winning squad, and when everyone plays their part to the best of their abilities, championships happen! I had to know from Bud’s closest and most trusted team members what they thought about him as a man and a boxer. So I tracked down three members of his inner circle – all Omaha natives – and asked them about Bud’s early years. The first was Steven Nelson, a super middleweight contender who trains with BoMac and has known Bud for more than 25 years. “The streets of Omaha made him,” Nelson told me. “I always feared those same streets would consume him or destroy him like so many other young men over the years, but boxing saved him from that. Boxing kept him away from gangs and drugs, but the streets is where he gets that edge you see in the ring. “We’re super competitive in Omaha. And Bud’s the most competitive person I’ve ever known. He’s competitive
He didn’t know how to box yet, had no technique, was getting hit and getting tired, but he wanted to keep going. All the other little boys was scared of him. “Even when he was a kid, Bud wanted all the smoke. That’s why I respected him even though I was older and was already on the amateur circuit.” Bernie said Bud has matured a lot over the years. “I remember him losing a bout in a tournament and watching [future three-time Olympian] Rau’shee Warren win it,” he said. “That was a wake-up call for him. He decided who he really was and understood that he needed to learn technique and the art of boxing. That’s when he really started working hard and being the last one out of the gym.” Even after he dedicated himself to the sweet science, Bud still had a street mentality, according to Bernie. “Just after he turned pro, we were at an exclusive amateur boxing function in Omaha. He told me if he saw Floyd Mayweather Jr. or anyone with The Money Team here with all the money they like to show off, he would rob them. I asked him why would he say something like that or even think that, and he told me that it just pissed him off the way Floyd flaunts his money around people who don’t have it. Bud’s really a good kid; he was just brought up tough. Everybody in his family is tough.” Finally, I spoke to BoMac, the head trainer and, in my opinion, the glue that holds the entire team together. “I knew Bud was the one after I saw how he handled losing at a very early age,” BoMac said. “He would get beat and he’d want to fight that kid over and over ’til he won. “I didn’t have to make him train hard or keep him focused. He was self- motivated, especially after a loss. When he lost a fight, he would go back and watch the tape to see why. That made my job easy.
“But I was still nervous for him when we’d go to the big national tournaments and he’d be in with guys from Ohio, Michigan, Texas, California – all those hotbeds for amateur boxing. Nebraska was all about football, not boxing. We didn’t have a boxing culture to boast about until Bud came along. Bud beat the best boxers from every hotbed – easily! – when he was 13 years old. That’s when I knew he was destined to be a champion. “When we didn’t get the nod at the U.S. Olympic Trials [losing to eventual 2008 Olympic representative Sadam Ali], I knew we had hit the ceiling in the amateurs. It was just like at the Golden Gloves. It was time to turn pro.” “Boxing kept him away from gangs and drugs, but the streets is where he gets that edge you see in the ring.” BoMac said the toughest thing he and Bud had to overcome occurred early in Bud’s pro career. “When he got shot at a dice game, that happened just before his ESPN debut,” BoMac recalled. “He was 8-0, not signed to a big promoter yet, so he needed the exposure. I was like, ‘What the fuck?’ The bullet just grazed him, but it hit his head! And Bud still wanted to fight! “But he had to miss that opportunity, and that made him want to win more. He also had to learn that the people he was hanging out with and the streets are not more important than his boxing career.” Bud learned that lesson and his bond with BoMac grew stronger, but that doesn’t mean their relationship isn’t challenging at times.
“It’s a business partnership, but we’re like family,” said BoMac. “One day he’s like my son, the next day he’s like my enemy. He will pop off at the mouth with me and I have to let him know that I’m too old to be playing around. Sometimes you have to tell him when his skirt is showing. I’m an old-school trainer, and part of that is telling it like it is to your fighter.” BoMac is keeping it real with his fighter’s latest challenge. It’s not going to be business as usual with Canelo. “I told him, ‘You have to approach this like this is your last fight ever. There is no rematch for another 100 million dollars. There is no next fight.’ “Bud understands that. The whole team understands that.” Bud’s teammates tell a story of a boy who became a man who became Omaha’s champion. Can Bud do the unthinkable? If he beats Canelo Alvarez, is he one of the greatest boxers ever? What else is left to do? My dream is to see Bud fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. in an exhibition bout at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln in front of all the Cornhuskers fans. I know it sounds crazy and I know I’m getting ahead of myself, but I think we could get 90,000 to show up for that. But the reality is that in Canelo, Bud is facing the best boxer he has ever faced – and that’s without factoring in him jumping up two weight classes. So why am I so confident in Bud? Because he never forgot where he came from. Because greatness doesn’t start with media hype, fan praise, pound- for-pound lists and multimillion-dollar paydays. It starts in small gyms with dusty floors and people who believe in you before anyone else does. Bud is the hope Omaha didn’t know it still had. And if you ask me who’s the greatest to ever come out of Nebraska – not just the best fighter, but the fiercest competitor and the truest champion – there’s only one answer: Terence “Bud” Crawford.
with everything. You can’t challenge him in anything – basketball, football, wrestling, racing, bowling, ping-pong, whatever – because the contest will never end. He makes other competitive people give up, because Bud is going to play you until he beats you. “We love that attitude here. We love sports and we love winning. We want to win at everything, but we know we have to earn it. Nobody is coming to Omaha looking for the next best anything. We know we’re not getting the opportunities that bigger cities get. Omaha people have to strive to get to greatness. That’s Bud.” I asked Nelson to describe Bud’s fighting style. “Complex,” he said. “He can fight and he can box. He’s quick, he’s got timing, ring smarts and, most importantly, he’s got his
Nebraska wrestling fans greet Bud at WWE SmackDown in July 2024.
competitiveness. When you have all of that, how can anyone beat you?” Next up was Bernie Tha Boxer (aka Bernard Davis), a former amateur standout who now trains fighters and hosts his own YouTube channel. When he was 13, Bernie met a 7-year-old Bud at the gym and has served as a role model in and out of the ring ever since. I asked him if he saw the seed of greatness when Bud was still a kid. “I don’t know if it was greatness, but he always had that dog in him that would not allow him to quit even when someone got the better of him,” Bernie said. “I remember him sparring with my brother when he first started boxing.
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