Terence Crawford watched William Zepeda from ringside and admitted he had the wrong idea about him.
Zepeda won the vacant WBC lightweight title on Saturday at The Theater at Virgin Hotels in Las Vegas, outworking Lamont Roach Jr. over 12 rounds for a unanimous decision. The cards read 117-111, 117-111 and 118-110. It is the first world championship of his career.
Crawford was on the TNT panel and did not hide his surprise.
Zepeda caught me off guard. I wasn’t ready for that. I was looking for a straight come forward type fighter, but from round one I said ‘damn look at his movement.'
He kept listing what he saw.
Look at his footwork. His distance, his range, his angles, his faints, his jabbing, his counter ability, his punch placement. How he was controlling the fight. Roach would hit him with a good shot, but he would eat it and come right back.
The panel then raised Emanuel Navarrete, the unified super-featherweight champion, as a possible opponent. Crawford did not think it would be pretty.
That’s CTE at its finest. You talk about a bloodbath, it’s a bloodbath waiting.
Both men are Mexican, both come forward, and neither is known for taking rounds off. Navarrete is a three-weight world champion who added the IBF super-featherweight belt to his WBO title by beating Eduardo Nunez in February, and a move up would put a fourth division in reach.
Zepeda leaves Las Vegas 34-1 with 27 knockouts. His only loss came against Shakur Stevenson in July 2025, in a fight for this same vacant title.
Against Shakur, it was an exam I couldn’t pass.
The belt came free again in February, when Stevenson was stripped after declining to pay a sanctioning fee for a 140-pound fight the WBC title was not part of.
