Errol Spence beats Crawford, says GGG’s trainer

By Boxing News - 07/25/2016 - Comments

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By Dan Ambrose: IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez says unbeaten welterweight contender Errol Spence Jr. (20-0, 17 KOs) beats WBC/WBO light welterweight champion Terence “Bud” Crawford (29-0, 20 KOs) in a couple more fights from now. Spence would be a nightmare for Crawford with his punching power and his body attacks.

Crawford was staggered badly by former featherweight champion Yuriorkis Gamboa in 2014, and that’s the only hard puncher that he’s fought during his career. Spence is a completely different animal. He’s bigger, stronger, and very good at cutting off the ring on guys that run from him.

Spence, 26, is younger than the 28-year-old Crawford and has a two inch reach advantage. Being a body puncher, Spence wouldn’t miss with his punches the way that Victor Postol did last Saturday night in his unification match against Crawford at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Postol, 32, made the mistake of throwing nothing but head shots for 12 rounds against Crawford, and not attacking him to the body. Postol didn’t seem to understand that the best way to beat a runner is to cut off the ring and attack the body, because it’s hard to run when you’re getting hit with hard, stabbing body shots. Spence would have cut the ring off on Crawford in every round and take the air out of his tires with hard punches to the body.

Sanchez really admires Spence’s talent and sees him as the guy that will be soon taking over the welterweight division as the No.1 guy. Sanchez points out that Spence, 5’9 ½” is bigger than the 5’8” Crawford. Sanchez sees Spence as being very similar to a young Terry Norris, who he trained earlier in his career. Norris is a former IBF/WBC junior middleweight champion. Spence has a longer reach than Norris, and he’s more of a body puncher. Norris focused mostly on throwing head shots in his career.

“In three or four fights, watch Errol Spence,” said Sanchez to Fighthype.com. “To me, he reminds me of a young Terry Norris when I had Terry Norris. He’s got all the tools. He’s a great athlete, and he wants to kick your [expletive].”

When asked whether Spence can beat Terence Crawford, Sanchez said, “In a couple of more fights, Errol Spence. He’s a bigger guy, too.”

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With Crawford being with Top Rank and Spence with Al Haymon, it’s hard to imagine the two of them ever fighting each other in their careers. Crawford’s promoter Bob Arum seemed to lose his cool last week when asked by a reporter if he’d be interested in matching Manny Pacquiao against Keith Thurman, a fighter that is managed by Al Haymon. It didn’t appear that Arum was interested in making that fight.

If Spence takes over the welterweight division in the near future, I cannot see Arum putting him in with Spence. It’s likely that Crawford will move up to the welterweight division and beat WBO 147lb champion Jessie Vargas if someone doesn’t get to him first. Once Crawford has the WBO title, I think he’s going to be matched up against a lot of Arum’s fighters like Jessie Benavidez, Clarence Booth, Brandon Rios, Mikeal Zewski and Lenny Zappavigna. I think Arum will recognize the danger and risk involved in putting Crawford in against a sturdy welterweight with tremendous punching power like Spence.

Crawford did not look all that good when pressured by Postol hard in the 12th round. With the way that Crawford was getting trapped against the ropes by Postol, you have to wonder why the Ukrainian fighter didn’t attack Crawford that way in the earlier rounds. Crawford looked as vulnerable in that round as many runners look when facing a pressure fighter. He did not look powerful, and he struggled with Postol’s pressure and combination punching.

Errol Spence would put far more pressure on Crawford than he’s ever dealt with before, and I think it would end badly for Crawford in four or five rounds. Honestly, I can’t see Crawford lasting no longer than Chris Algieri did in his 5th round knockout loss to Spence last April. Algieri tried to move on Spence, but he was unable to run from him because he kept getting caught. Spence wasn’t foolish enough to try and land a lot of head shots against the moving Algieri. Spence went after Algieri’s body and that prevented him from running the way that we saw Crawford do last Saturday night.

I’d like to think that Arum will be open to putting Crawford in with Spence one of these days for the good of boxing. However, I think Arum will keep Crawford in his own Top Rank league with him mainly fighting his guys. If Arum does look to match Crawford against an outsider from Haymon’s stable, it’ll be guys that Crawford matches up well against like Danny Garcia and Adrien Broner. In other words, Arum would likely look to match Crawford against good but flawed fighters from Haymon’s stable. I doubt that Arum would want any part of matching Crawford against Keith Thurman, Errol Spence or Shawn Porter, because those are fights where he could get seriously hurt once those guys cut off the ring on him to prevent him from running.

Spence will be fighting an IBF welterweight eliminator bout against Leonard Bundu (33-1-2, 12 KOs) next month on August 21 at the Amphitheater in Coney Island, New York. If Spence wins that fight, he’ll be the mandatory challenger to IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook. That fight will be Spence’s first big test of his career if Brook doesn’t decide to vacate his title first. With Brook fighting what could be a very grueling fight against Golovkin on September 10, it’s very likely that Brook will give up his IBf title if he takes too much of a beating in that fight. It’ll depend largely on ow much time the International Boxing Federation gives him to recover from the fight. If they order him to fight Spence in his very next fight rather than letting him have another voluntary defense, then it’s likely that Brook will give up the title. It would be potentially unhealthy for Brook to go from one really hard fight against Golovkin to an equally hard one against Spence. Brook could take a career’s worth of punishment in back to back fights, and I doubt that he’ll want to do that.