HBO Boxing Odds For Saturday – Crawford vs Molina

WBO and WBC world super lightweight champion Terence Crawford (29-0) is back in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska this Saturday (December 10, 2016) for a title defense against John Molina Jr (29-6). The fight is the main event of Top Rank Boxing’s 8 fight card that will see the main events air on HBO. This is going to be a tough outing for Molina Jr any way that you cut it. He is a gritty and tough fighter and he is going to want to try and grind Terence Crawford down. Now, Molina Jr walked into his last fight with Ruslan Provodnikov an underdog, but he unveiled a revamped game under veteran coach Shaheed Saluki that saw him outbox the hard charging Russian over twelve rounds. It was an excellent all around performance by Molina Jr,, who won a vacant WBO International title to set up this shot at Crawford. Now with a full training camp under his new coach, Molina Jr is looking to come into the fight with a game plan specifically geared to Crawford. And that is where the problem lies for Molina Jr. You can plan for Terence Crawford all you want, but once you are in there with the real, live Crawford, a lot of the plan is likely to go out the window. There are few fighters today that bring as complete a skill set as Crawford, who is currently ranked the #5 pound for pound fighter in the world by the respected Transnational Boxing Rankings Board. Crawford is a near flawless technician who manages his footwork and range at an elite level. What is more he is mentally tough and he is not a fighter who people have been able to grind with or back off. Crawford is capping off a solid year. This is his third fight of 2016, and getting three fights in a calendar year is tough at the world title level. In his last outing Crawford faced then undefeated Viktor Postol. The match was a unification bout as Crawford was the WBO champion and Postol held th WBC belt, and the fight was considered to be a very close and potentially thrilling fight of two of the world’s top fighters. What ensued was Crawford clearly seperating himself from Postol to win a wide decision victory. A fight that was supposed to be a test for Crawford was turned into a master class as Crawford clearly showed he was a notch above Postol. Crawford’s name gets tossed around as an opponent for Manny Pacquiao, but that fight has never materialized. Kudos to Crawford for staying active and not just get stuck waiting for that big payday. CenturyLink Center – Omaha, Nebraska – HBO Super Lightweight 12 rounds – John Molina Jr +1900 Terence Crawford -3800