The long-awaited undisputed welterweight matchup between Errol Spence Jr. and Terence Crawford will finally take place July 29 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas and headline a Premier Boxing Champions card on Showtime pay-per-view.
The 50-50 matchup will mark one of the most anticipated welterweight bouts in decades.
Predictions for the fight will arrive from far and wide corners of the boxing world, and Oscar De La Hoya is already locked in on who he thinks will win the super fight.
“It hasn’t changed because they haven’t fought since I picked Crawford to win. I don’t think anything has changed except they’re getting older. They’re both getting older as we speak, but I think that Crawford still has the ability, boxing skill, and IQ. You can see it,” De La Hoya told Marcos Villegas in an interview on Fight Hub TV.
“You don’t have to be a genius to know who’s the better boxer. Spence, don’t get me wrong, he’s a great fighter. We built him. Golden Boy built him. So Spence has a tremendous shot of knocking him out if he catches him. He has tremendous power and a tremendous IQ. But I think Crawford has better leg movement. He knows how to slip and slide, move in and out, and bounce on his toes and throw punches in bunches.
“You can’t win a fight by throwing one or two punches if Crawford is going to throw four, five, or six punches. Then obviously he’s going to take the rounds and win the fight.
“I strongly feel Crawford and Spence are both great fighters. But in my humble opinion, Crawford has the better ability. He has the better arsenal inside the ring.”
The fight between three-division champion Crawford (39-0, 30 KOs) and career-long welterweight and current unified titlist Spence (28-0, 22 KOs) will crown boxing’s first fully unified 147-pound champion of the four-belt era.
Crawford is coming off a sixth-round knockout win and a WBO title defense against David Avanesyan in December.
Spence will head into the Crawford fight having not fought in 16 months. His last fight came in April 2022 when he scored a 10th-round technical knockout victory against Yordenis Ugas.
Spence currently holds the WBC, WBA, and IBF titles.
Manouk Akopyan is a sports journalist, writer, and broadcast reporter. He’s also a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and the MMA Journalists Association. He can be reached on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube at @ManoukAkopyan, through email at manouk[dot]akopyan[at]gmail.com, or via www.ManoukAkopyan.com.