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.
You are viewing: When Did Terence Crawford Get Shot
“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.
Read more : When Does Pedestrian Have Right Of Way
“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.
Read more : What Do Guardian Angels Do When We Cry
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.
Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHEN
