Terence Crawford pinned plenty of bulletin board material as fuel for his fire ahead of his fight against Canelo Alvarez.

He’s too small.

He can’t handle the power.

He won’t be able to go toe-to-toe.

He’s too inactive.

The stage would be too big.

Crawford (42-0, 31 KOs) crushed all of the tropes in tremendous fashion by stepping up two weight classes to beat Alvarez (63-3-2, 39 KOs) for the undisputed super middleweight title at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas earlier this month.

In doing so, Crawford became a five-division crownholder and a three-weight undisputed champion (140, 147, 168).

“He didn't have to [agree to] fight me,” Crawford said on 4th&1 With Cam Newton. “[The most disrespectful thing] was when people were saying he was going to knock me out in three rounds, and I was too small. I looked at that as disrespectful. I was never dropped or knocked out before, so what made them think that I was going to get knocked out?

"People were disrespecting and discrediting my skill set just because Canelo was an all-time great. But, like I said before, he hadn't fought Terence Crawford yet.”

While recounting the clash, Crawford said he felt that he was in control from Round 1 and that he won the first four on the scorecards. Two of the judges saw it differently, however, giving Alvarez two of those rounds, while the other gave the Mexican star one. The fight was a draw going into the 11th round on two of the cards, and Crawford made sure there wouldn’t be controversy by sweeping the last two for all three judges.

Crawford got comfortable as the fight went on because Alvarez wasn’t able to hurt him.

“I'm not going to lie. It was the second round, and I was like, 'He doesn't punch as hard as everyone says.' But you still have to be cautious,” said Crawford.

“In my mind, he's trying to make me fall asleep, he's trying to hit me with punches that are not too hard, and I'm like I can take that, and he comes up with a hard shot, like boom, gotcha. So I was definitely aware, cautious and fighting my fight. Once the fight settled in, there was nothing he could do then.”