Crawford's ringside call to 'go to the body' guided Dober to UFC 277 knockout

Drew Dober has credited boxing world champion Terence Crawford with a pivotal piece of ringside coaching that steered him to a third-round knockout of Rafael Alves at UFC 277 in Dallas in 2022, revealing the story ahead of his UFC 334 bout at Madison Square Garden on 14 November.

Struggling to land clean punches against Alves’ elusive head movement through the opening round, Dober was heading back to his corner when he spotted Crawford shouting from the front row. The instruction was simple and direct: attack the body.

“After the first round, I’m going over to my corner and I see Terence Crawford in that front row. And he’s just yelling at me, ‘Drew, Drew.’ So, I look at him and he goes, ‘Go to the body, go to the body,’” Dober recalled. “I was like, if Crawford says it. So, in the second round, I started going to the body and started finding success. So, in the third round, I threw a liver shot and I dropped him with that liver shot.”

The relationship between Dober and Crawford stretches back to their time together at B&B Boxing in Omaha, Nebraska, where the two first crossed paths when Dober was still an emerging fighter. The introduction was a bruising one. Crawford, then largely unknown outside boxing circles, switched to a southpaw stance to mirror Dober and immediately drew blood with a single jab.

“Terence Crawford bloodied my nose in the first 30 seconds of our spar. I was a young fighter in a North Omaha gym,” Dober wrote on X. “Never heard of the guy they called ‘Bud.’ He saw I was a southpaw, switched to southpaw too, and stuck me with one jab. I was bleeding like a stuck pig.”

Dober said he absorbed roughly three punches for every one he managed to throw during that session — a humbling lesson that clearly left a lasting impression on how seriously he took Crawford’s counsel years later inside a UFC cage.

Now 29-15 with one no-contest on his record, Dober has won his last two fights by stoppage and carries that momentum into a lightweight clash with Chris Duncan (15-3) at UFC 334 on 14 November at Madison Square Garden in New York.