{"id":36035,"date":"2026-10-10T15:15:05","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T15:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/lewis-crocker-former-ibf-welterweight-champion-plots-his-route-back-to-the-top\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T15:15:06","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T15:15:06","slug":"lewis-crocker-former-ibf-welterweight-champion-plots-his-route-back-to-the-top","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/lewis-crocker-former-ibf-welterweight-champion-plots-his-route-back-to-the-top\/","title":{"rendered":"Lewis Crocker: Former IBF welterweight champion plots his route back to the top"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Still, it is good to be home as he embarks upon a route back to the top and while opportunities may present themselves in 2027, Crocker is not looking past the challenge of 26-year-old Cooper who will see this as his golden ticket.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It would have been great to have a first defence in Belfast, but ultimately it doesn&#8217;t matter &#8211; there&#8217;s still two men getting into the ring,&#8221; Crocker reasoned.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s good to be back in Belfast anyway, and get on the road to two-time world champion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;More than anything now, I want to be a two-time world champion and we&#8217;ve a great plan ahead but I&#8217;m not looking past Owen, because he&#8217;s a great fighter and I&#8217;m expecting a really tough test.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Crocker&#8217;s old foe Paddy Donovan is front of the queue to face Paro, while the welterweight division has come alive once again with some of the sport&#8217;s biggest names in Ryan Garcia [WBC], Teofimo Lopez [WBA] and Devin Haney [WBO] holding the other titles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A second shot at a title at Windsor Park where he won his first against Donovan &#8220;would be great&#8221; but whomever and wherever, Crocker would be happy to take.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There are four world titles out there, so any one of them [would be great],&#8221; he continued.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;[I plan to get] back on track and push towards it, but as I say, Owen&#8217;s my main focus right now.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/boxing\/articles\/cw073kk3800lo?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Still, it is good to be home as he embarks upon a route back to the top and while opportunities may present themselves in 2027, Crocker is not looking past the challenge of 26-year-old Cooper who will see this as his golden ticket. &#8220;It would have been great to have a first defence in Belfast, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-boxing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36037,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36035\/revisions\/36037"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}