Terence Crawford and Canelo Alvarez fought in boxing's Super Bowl last year in front of 70,482 fans in Las Vegas at Allegiant Stadium, home of the NFL's Las Vegas Raiders. Another 41 million fans watched the superfight on Netflix.

On Sunday, the Seattle Seahawks take on the New England Patriots to headline Super Bowl LX at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California. More than 100 million fans will tune in, most for the game, and casuals for the commercials and halftime concert that complements the main event. 

Crawford believes that when boxing delivers fights such as the one he had against Alvarez in September, it supersedes the biggest event America’s favorite sport has to offer. 

"Boxing is a bigger event and more pressure than the Super Bowl," Crawford said on the Pivot Podcast, hosted by Ryan Clark, a former Super Bowl champion and defensive back turned sports commentator.

"I'm not taking any credit away from the Super Bowl. That's the biggest event. When we compare the two, man, c'mon now … You have two men fighting each other. You can't call a timeout or make a substitution when you're tired. It's simple. You can't switch teams. Every [person from the] sports world wants to be a boxer. Even soccer moms want to train boxing. I haven't seen one sport not paying homage to boxers. You can't name it. You see every [person] wanting to be a football player? 

"They see us at a high level, but they don't see the work we did to get to that level. You see [football] players coming out of college at 18, 19, they might get on the right team and play in the Super Bowl, and they might not have done anything as a backup. You can't do that in boxing. You'll get hurt." 

Crawford, a lifelong Green Bay Packers and Nebraska Cornhuskers fan, said he was too small to play football and too short for basketball, so boxing was the path he pursued.

It resulted in an illustrious 17-year undefeated career with 42 wins and titles across five divisions, three of which were undisputed crowns. Crawford retired in December as the pound-for-pound king of the sport and was named The Ring's 2025 "Fighter of the Year" last week. 

"I'm at peace [with retirement]," he said. "I did everything that I set my sights out to do. I did it my way. I have nothing else to prove."

After momentarily considering a middleweight run, Crawford, 38, felt he was getting too old for the sport and wanted to protect himself from taking any further damage.

“We all look up to Muhammad Ali as the most iconic boxer ever, and to see him deteriorate like he did, we don’t want to be like that,” he said. “You're the greatest fighter of all time, but you can't even take care of yourself. You can't even wash your own ass. It's like, 'Damn, do I want to go through that? Is it worth it?' It’s not worth it.

"You think you're good, and as the years pass, you start slurring, forgetting things and have headaches. I'm sure it's like that in football, too. The brain is not meant to get beat on and have wear and tear. Everyone thinks that since we're able to endure the pain and trauma, that we're unbreakable. We break just like everyone else, but we're built to have a high pain tolerance to go through it.

“[There isn't a number like $80 million or $100 million for me to fight again] because now you are selling your soul. Win or lose, one thousand percent [I was going to retire after the Alvarez fight]. Just everything that I went through in that camp. I wanted to retire after the Errol Spence Jr. fight in 2023. I always told myself that I wanted to retire from boxing, and not have boxing retire me. There was nowhere for me to go after Canelo."

Manouk Akopyan is The Ring’s lead writer. Follow him on X and Instagram: @ManoukAkopyan