By Keith Idec

Terence Crawford is impressed with Julius Indongo’s willingness to travel wherever necessary for a fight.

Indongo’s trip to Nebraska, where he’ll challenge Crawford in the state capital of Lincoln on Saturday night, marks his third straight fight in his opponent’s home country.

The native Namibian needed just one punch and 40 seconds to upset unbeaten IBF junior welterweight champion Eduard Troyanovsky (26-1, 23 KOs) on December 3 in Moscow. Four months later, he traveled to Glasgow, Scotland, and added the WBA 140-pound championship to his collection by out-boxing Ricky Burns (41-6-1, 14 KOs) over 12 rounds.

“It shows a lot about his character and his confidence in his ability in the ring,” Crawford said during a conference call Wednesday. “Him being a two-time world champion and in this short a period of time shows that he’s got a lot of confidence. But at the same time, he’s a little older [34], so he’s at the end of his career coming along. So he really don’t have a lot of choices with what he wanna do. He can’t wait around for a long period of time, with how old he is.”

Before he went to Moscow to challenge Russia’s Troyanovsky, each of Indongo’s first 20 professional fights took place in his home country of Namibia, a small country of slightly more than 2 million residents in western Africa. Indongo (22-0, 11 KOs) will encounter Crawford (31-0, 22 KOs) at Lincoln’s Pinnacle Bank Arena, about a 45-minute drive from Crawford’s hometown of Omaha.

Despite Indongo’s impressive run over the past eight months, the 29-year-old Crawford is approximately an 11-1 favorite over the tall, rangy southpaw.

“Indongo’s a good fighter,” said Crawford, who owns the WBC and WBO super lightweight titles. “He’s a good boxer. He’s got good legs. He seems like he can punch a little bit. He don’t let his opponent get on the inside and do a lot of damage to him. So that’s a good thing.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.