Terence Crawford was sat ringside to witness Ryan Garcia‘s dominant knockout win over Conor Benn.

Garcia was defending his WBC welterweight title against Benn at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, with a lot of talk pre-fight about how Benn would cope with the power of ‘King Ry’ as he took part in his first welterweight bout since April 2022.

It turned out that ‘The Destroyer’ was unable to deal with that power, as a big right hand in the second round dropped Benn, and even though he was able to get back to his feet, a further onslaught from Garcia forced the referee to jump in and stop the contest.

One man that was backing Benn to come out on top ahead of the fight was five-weight world champion Crawford, who retired from the sport back in December after earning undisputed honours in a third division.

Crawford and ‘King Ry’ have been involved in a number of heated back and forths over the past few months, but it appears that ‘Bud’ gave credit where it was due after Garcia’s win, with a social media clip revealing his immediate reaction to the performance.

“I said if Conor could handle Ryan’s power then Ryan would be in trouble, he couldn’t handle it. It’s the fight game. Congratulations Ryan. He did what he did.”

Garcia has been keen to try and get Crawford out of retirement for a fight, but it seems that ‘King Ry’ could now be about to turn his attention to a unification clash with WBA welterweight champion Teofimo Lopez instead, after calling him out following the win over Benn.