Terence Crawford proves he has everything but a rival

He unifies the welterweight division with a massive win over Errol Spence Jr.

Errol Spence Jr. likes to call himself the Big Fish. Terence Crawford carried a net into the ring Saturday night.

Spence Jr. also likes to call himself The Truth. Crawford came to T-Mobile Arena bringing The Consequences.

This was a case of unfriendly fire between friendly welterweight champions, and most of it went one way. Spence never had been knocked down, in 28 pro bouts. This time he hit the floor in the second round and twice in the seventh, and in the ninth round referee Harvey Dock brought him to shore, stopping the fight and giving Crawford his fourth welterweight championship.

Even though they shook hands during their mid-week staredown, this was nobody’s Bud movie. Spence was Crawford’s friend before and after. In between, he was chum.

“He’s too fucking slow for you,” said Brian McIntyre, Crawford’s trainer, after the first round, which Spence won on two judges’ cards. (He won only the third round on the other one).

Spence was also too one-dimensional. His game plan against everyone else was to use his right jab until something else opened up. That always worked. Here, Crawford blocked or dodged those jabs and then made Spence pay a fearsome price whenever he missed.

The first knockdown came when Spence overextended while jabbing, and Crawford clipped him with a nice left-right. In the seventh, with Crawford’s dominance all over Spence’s face, the knockdowns came on a straight right hook, and then two consecutive hooks. Crawford thus extended his knockout streak to eleven, went to 40-0 with 31 knockouts, and became the second boxer, after Clarissa Shields, to hold all four belts in two different divisions.

And to think this was supposed to be the summit meeting between the two best pound-for-pound boxers alive.

“His jab was what we were worried about going in,” said Crawford, who underlined his old-school mindset by making his ringwalk alongside Eminem.

“Normally we work on a flicking jab during camp, but this time we wanted a firmer one so we could neutralize his. Once we were able to take away the thing he did best, the rest was history.”

Historic, too. Crawford connected on 60 percent of his power shots, although truthfully his jab was too powerful for Spence. Spence fired 296 jabs and actually hit Crawford on 33 of them. When Shawn Porter extended Crawford in November of 2021, he landed only 13 percent of his jabs.

Crawford was successful on 42 percent of his own jabs, and he relied on his lefthanded stance, which once was a novelty but now is at the top of his playbook.

Spence was swimming upstream in many ways. In 2020 he pulled out a split decision over Porter, a fight that was probably decided on an 11th round knockdown. Porter then fought Crawford and was stopped in the 10th, after two knockdowns.

“He’s the best I ever fought,” Porter said, as he announced his retirement after the bout that night. “I didn’t have my timing, but he never let me get into a rhythm. Whatever ‘it’ is, he’s got it. It’s like Jerry Maguire, when they were talking about the ‘quan.’ He’s got that.”

Crawford was fighting outside Bob Arum’s Top Rank umbrella Saturday night, which seemed to relax him, soften his baleful stare. Fighter and promoter had been bickering for years, with Arum bemoaning Crawford’s lack of pay-per-view punch. No one really expects this fight to reach a million views, either, even though Crawford and Spence are two highly skilled, drama-free Americans. They just haven’t been in the ring enough and, thanks to their own dominance, haven’t been involved in classic fights.

It makes you wonder what’s next for either one. Spence has the right to call for a rematch and he indicated that he would, even though the fight left nothing unresolved. It would be like TCU demanding another shot at Georgia.

Spence also said he preferred that the rematch happen at 154 pounds, seven above the welterweight limit. Crawford might agree to that if he thinks no other fight in his future will do similar commerce. But all the shots will be called by him.

At the end, Crawford came to Spence’s corner and seemed legitimately concerned for his health.

“You’re a hell of a fighter,” he said. “You already know that. You don’t need anybody telling you that.”

Actually, Spence very much needed somebody to tell him that. He can beat 99 percent of the fighters in his weight-class neighborhood, and he should concentrate on finding a couple of them.

He just ran into Terence Crawford Saturday night, and that’s a whole different can of worms.