Terence Crawford has listened to Errol Spence Jr. pick apart his resume throughout the buildup toward their tantalizing welterweight showdown Saturday night in Las Vegas.
Crawford countered during a recent virtual press conference by pointing out that Spence primarily has beaten fighters who had already lost while ascending to the top of the 147-pound division. Spence (28-0, 22 KOs) has conquered only two unbeaten opponents since the DeSoto, Texas native legitimized himself as a welterweight contender.
The second of those victories came against Mikey Garcia, who was 39-0 when he opposed Spence in March 2019. Garcia, a four-weight world champion, moved up two divisions, though, from lightweight to welterweight, when he challenged Spence in a FOX Sports Pay-Per-View main event at the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Spence dominated the smaller Garcia on his way to shutting out the since-retired Oxnard, California native on all three scorecards in their 12-round, 147-pound championship bout. The 2012 U.S. Olympian knocked out overmatched Mexican contender Carlos Ocampo (then 22-0) in the first round of his previous bout, which took place in June 2018 at Ford Center at The Star, the Cowboys’ training facility in Frisco, Texas.
The 33-year-old Spence beat former welterweight champions Shawn Porter and Kell Brook before Crawford stopped them, but Porter had been beaten on points by Brook and Keith Thurman before Spence edged him by split decision to win their title unification fight in September 2019 at Staples Center in Los Angeles. Gennadiy Golovkin broke Brook’s right orbital bone and stopped him in the fifth round of the bout before Spence fractured Brook’s left eye socket and knocked him out in the 11th round of their May 2017 clash at Bramall Lane, a soccer stadium in Brook’s hometown of Sheffield, England.
Though Julius Indongo and Jeff Horn, two of Crawford’s most historically significant conquests, aren’t as well regarded as Brook and Porter, Crawford (39-0, 30 KOs) has beaten seven undefeated foes since the three-division champion made his HBO debut by beating Breidis Prescott on points in March 2013. Crawford stopped Australia’s Horn (then 18-0-1) in the ninth round to win the WBO welterweight title in June 2018, nine months after he annihilated Namibia’s Indongo (then 22-0) in the third round to become boxing’s first fully unified 140-pound champ of the four-belt era.
“That’s his mental,” Crawford said in response to Spence’s criticism of his resume. “That’s what he believes in. But there’s only one fighter that he [beat] – not even one fighter – all those fighters had a loss. So, they already had something took from ‘em. So, him going in to fight somebody that had something took [from] ‘em, they already knew how to lose.
“When I took things from fighters, I took they belt, I took they 0, I took a lot from ‘em. I took they mental. They never was the same. They never performed the same. So, I could say the same. But, you know, that’s his mental, that’s what he believe in, and come fight night he’s gonna have to prove that.”
In addition to Indongo and Horn, Andrey Klimov (16-0), Yuriorkis Gamboa (23-0), Viktor Postol (28-0), Jose Benavidez Jr. (27-0) and Egidijus Kavaliauskas (21-0-1) were unbeaten before they lost to Crawford.
Omaha’s Crawford, 35, is listed by most sportsbooks as a slight favorite to beat Spence in their Showtime Pay-Per-View main event at T-Mobile Arena ($84.99). They’ll fight for Spence’s IBF, WBA and WBC crowns and Crawford’s WBO belt, as well as the distinction of becoming boxing’s first undisputed welterweight champion of the four-belt era.
Spence-Crawford pay-per-view undercard coverage is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. EDT (5 p.m. EDT).
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.