Is Terence Crawford headed to Golden Boy? De La Hoya touts “big moves” in photo

Oscar De La Hoya says he and Golden Boy are looking to make “big moves” in a photo from today with Terence Crawford.

UPDATE (9:20 PM): When asked whether Crawford vs Rocha was next on DAZN’s Rocha-Ashie broadcast, Bernard Hopkins responded: “Correct.”

Terence Crawford at the very least paid a friendly visit to Golden Boy headquarters today, leading to speculation that the WBO welterweight titleholder could potentially sign with the company.

In the Twitter post from Golden Boy, the company said “Big things brewing” regarding the photo.

In De La Hoya’s Instagram post, he wrote, “The best (pound-for-pound) fighter on the planet stopped by Golden Boy headquarters this morning. My partner Bernard Hopkins and I making big moves.”

So is Crawford headed to Golden Boy? There are at least two potential fights there for him, one against Alexis Rocha — who is ranked No. 3 by the WBO ahead of tonight’s fight with George Ashie, not expected to be a significant test — and Vergil Ortiz Jr, who will face Eimantas Stanionis for the secondary WBA “world” (“regular”) title in April.

And while it’s true that secondary WBA belts cannot be unified with full titles from other organizations, at least not when the WBA wants to follow their own rules, there is a chance that Errol Spence Jr simply will be moving up in weight sooner than later. It’s been reported that his next fight will be with Keith Thurman, who is his WBC mandatory, but at 154 lbs and not 147, thus a non-title fight.

That means that if Ortiz beats Stanionis this spring, and Spence moves up, Ortiz would be the only WBA world titlist at welterweight, opening the path to unification later in the year.

Crawford has been a promotional free agent since leaving Top Rank right after his late 2021 fight against Shawn Porter. He fought once in 2022, beating David Avanesyan on a BLK Prime pay-per-view in December. His stated target has been the Spence fight ever since the win over Porter, but it didn’t get done last year, and right now it doesn’t seem like there’s any real movement on that.