It’s official. The Tuesday morning countdown is on.
The latest in a decades-long line of transcendent events in the welterweight division is 32 days away.
Three-belt champ Errol Spence Jr. will, at last, face WBO-endorsed foil Terence Crawford in a 12-round title unification bout that’ll go down at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on July 29.
The two have shared belted space at 147 pounds since Crawford stopped dubious Manny Pacquiao conqueror Jeff Horn in nine rounds in June 2018, which was precisely 378 days after Spence had plucked the first of his titles – the IBF’s – from Kell Brook in Sheffield, England.
It’s been 1,844 days since Crawford’s hand was raised and started the clock ticking toward the showdown with Spence, which some suggest would have been a better match if made a year or two earlier but still has two of the top-six fighters in the Tuesday space’s most recent P4P list.
They’ve totaled nine KOs in 12 defenses – including eight against ex or reigning champions.
“Terrific it is,” ex-HBO blow-by-blow man Jim Lampley told BoxingScene.com. “There is no chance of a dull anticlimax. Vicious fighters are the most fun to watch, and Crawford is gleefully vicious.”
Not surprisingly, the prospect of two current elites locking horns at welterweight has one of the division’s recent rulers pondering how they’d have done during his time at the top.
Kermit Cintron held the IBF title at 147 for an 18-month stretch from 2006 to 2008 and defended twice, in addition to a failed bid for the WBO strap in 2005 and a subsequent loss to then-154-pound champ Canelo Alvarez in Mexico City in 2011.
He fought 48 times, winning 39, in a career that covered 18 years, finding success in large part because of a lanky 5-foot-11 frame and a powerful right hand that helped him accrue 30 wins by KO.
Cintron shared championship space with Miguel Cotto (WBA), Floyd Mayweather Jr. (WBC), Antonio Margarito (WBO), Paul Williams (WBO) and Carlos Quintana (WBO) during his reign. He was stopped twice by Margarito – including a rematch just nine months before the disgraced Mexican’s loss to Shane Mosley – and lost a technical decision to Williams in a fight one judge had him leading by shutout.
He’d have stood an inch-and-a-half taller than Spence with a two-inch edge in reach, while the height gap between he and Crawford would have been three inches, though their reaches were identical.
“Someone was gonna get knocked out and it wasn’t gonna be me,” Cintron told BoxingScene.com.
“Jab is key (against Crawford). Walk him down, pressure. Land hard power shots. Not allowing him to get comfortable. Spence is more of a bully-type fighter. Definitely not a guy you stand toe-to-toe with and not stand in front of him. I think the jab is key to both fighters and three-to-four punch combinations and not just one or two punches. Both fighters are beatable.
“Thinking of those two in my era, I can’t see them beating the likes of myself, Cotto, Paul Williams, Mayweather, (Zab) Judah and maybe two others I can’t think of right now.”
Cintron fought 10 more times in the seven years after his loss to Alvarez – going 6-1-2 before his final appearance in 2018 at age 38 wound up as a no-contest against Marquis Taylor in Bethlehem, Pa.
That fight was waved off by a cut in the third round and afterward he returned to his nearby adopted hometown of Reading to settle down with his wife, Maria, and three children, now aged 21, 16 and 15, and headed back to school to pursue a degree in radiology from Northampton Community College.
Such a busy post-ring life leaves little time for pining about the old days.
In fact, Cintron said, if he had it to do over again, he might have skipped the sport entirely to remain in school – he was attending a junior college in Lancaster before turning pro at 20 – and pursued a degree in education.
“I should have dictated my own career and not allowed others to dictate it for me,” he said. “In all honesty, I could have finished and graduated from college. I was studying to be a Phys-Ed teacher. I should’ve just stayed in my lane and forgot about boxing.”
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This week’s title-fight schedule:
WEDNESDAY
WBC strawweight title – Rayong, Thailand
Panya Pradabsri (champion/No. 2 Ring) vs. Norihito Tanaka (No. 9 WBC/Unranked Ring)
Pradabsri (39-1, 23 KO): Fourth title defense; Defeated Tanaka by unanimous decision last August
Tanaka (20-9, 10 KO): Third title fight (0-2); Lost both career fights outside of Japan (0-2, 0 KO)
Fitzbitz says: The challenger is 38 and a two-decade pro but has failed in both tries on the title level, including against Pradabsri. The result won’t change by much. Pradabsri by decision (95/5)
SATURDAY
Vacant IBF middleweight title – Wuppertal, Germany
Esquiva Falcao (No. 1 IBF/Unranked Ring) vs. Vincenzo Gualtieri (No. 3 IBF/Unranked Ring)
Falcao (30-0, 20 KO): First title fight; Second fight scheduled for 12 rounds (1-0, 1 KO)
Gualtieri (20-0-1, 7 KO): First title fight; Sixth fight scheduled for 12 rounds (5-0, 5 KO)
Fitzbitz says: Falcao hasn’t fought in better than a year and neither of them have faced a truly elite level of opposition, so it’s a close call here. But Falcao feels like the A-side. That’s enough. Falcao in 9 (60/40)
Last week’s picks: 2-0 (WIN: Martinez, Ioka)
2023 picks record: 22-8 (73.3 percent)
Overall picks record: 1,272-416 (75.4 percent)
NOTE: Fights previewed are only those involving a sanctioning body’s full-fledged title-holder – no interim, diamond, silver, etc. Fights for WBA “world championships” are only included if no “super champion” exists in the weight class.
Lyle Fitzsimmons has covered professional boxing since 1995 and written a weekly column for Boxing Scene since 2008. He is a full voting member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Reach him at fitzbitz@msn.com or follow him on Twitter – @fitzbitz.