By Chris Williams: Jeff Mayweather believes that a clash between unbeaten light welterweight champion Terence Crawford (30-0, 21 KOs) and welterweight Errol Spence Jr. (21-0, 18 KOs) will be taking place within a year and half.
Mayweather sees it as a great fight. Right now, Jeff is favoring the 26-year-old Spence to beat the 29-year-old Crawford, but he thinks that it could go the other way with Crawford winning by the time the two face each other in the future.
Crawford was interviewed after his recent knockout win over John Molina on December 10, Crawford appeared to be pushing Spence into the 154lb division by saying he thought he was moving up to junior middleweight. Crawford sounded like he wasn’t eager at all to take the fight with the young Spence.
Crawford said this when asked about fighting Spence: “He’s at 147. I’m at 140, and he may be moving up.”
Does sound like someone that is interested in fighting Spence? Crawford seemed like he was pushing Spence to the junior middleweight division. Why was Crawford doing that? I know what I thought when I saw the interview. I got the impression that Crawford wanted no part of fighting Spence. Jeff Mayweather obviously likes Crawford a lot, but I don’t think he saw the interview otherwise he wouldn’t be talking about them fighting each other.
One problem that could get in the way of a fight between the two is the fact that Crawford is with Top Rank, and Spence is with Al Haymon. It might not be realistic to assume that Crawford’s promoter Bob Arum will want to risk him suffering a knockout loss to the bigger, stronger, younger and arguably more talented Spence.
Arum is pretty good at picking opponents for Crawford, and he might not want to risk his unbeaten record by throwing him inside the ring with a young knockout artist like Spence. Crawford had all he could handle when he was pressured hard in the 12th round by Viktor Postol in their PPV fight on HBO last summer. Postol was getting the better of Crawford, and seemingly forced him into his bike with him stalling out the fight moving around the ring rather than trying to finish strong.
Jeff Mayweather said this to Fighthype.com about Crawford and Spence fighting:
“That’s going to be a huge, huge fight,” said Jeff Mayweather about a future match between Crawford and Spence. “They’re on a collision course. It’s going to be a good fight whenever it happens. It’s going to happen. I think that fights going to happen. I wouldn’t say a year. I would say probably a year or a year and a half. It’s going to be a tremendous fight. Right now, I’d lean just a little bit towards Spence, because I think he’s a little bit better puncher. But also the strides I’m seeing in Crawford becoming more of a complete fighter. You’re talking about a guy that can fight both right and left-handed. Now he’s incorporating movement with his feet. Things like that. I think that gives him a great chance of actually problems for Errol Spence, because he’s not going to be a guy that’s going to be there for you to hit and exchange with. He’s going to be a guy that’s going to be elusive as hell, and he’s going to make you work. Right now, I’d give the edge to Spence, but a year from now, two years from now, I don’t know. I think it’s a great fight for boxing. It’s two young, great guys. I like them both,” said Jeff Mayweather.
I disagree with Jeff on a number of issues with his thoughts on Crawford fighting Spence. First off, I do not see Spence and Crawford fighting each other unless Spence becomes a huge star like Floyd Mayweather Jr. Even then, I think Arum is going to keep Crawford in another lane fighting mainly his own Top Rank stable fighters in order to keep him from getting beaten.
Once it gets to the point where Crawford has nothing to lose by fighting Spence due to him becoming a big star, then I see Arum pulling the trigger on the fight. I don’t know how many years that’ll take. If Arum is still promoting by that point, I see him finally making the fight. I would hope that he would. It would be a shame if Arum starts taking Crawford overseas to fight guys like Jeff Horn or fighting in Macau like he was having his fighters do for a while there. I’m not sure happened with that idea.
Jeff Mayweather seems to think that the 29-year-old Crawford is going to get better as he ages, while the younger guy Spence won’t get better. I think Jeff is seeing things backwards. It’s the younger fighter that improves, not the older fighter. Spence beats Crawford right now if the fight happens, which it won’t, and then he destroys him in 2018 in my view.
I don’t think it matters one bit that Crawford can change from orthodox to southpaw stance. Jeff makes a big deal about that, but I don’t think changing stances would help Crawford one bit in a fight against Spence. What Jeff forgets is that Spence is a southpaw. That means he knows how to fight other southpaws, and he definitely knows how to fight fighters using the orthodox stance. Crawford can change stances all he wants against Spence, but I don’t think it’s going to help him. It might lead to Crawford getting knocked out while he’s changing stances. I’ve seen Crawford change stances in his fights, and nothing really changes. He doesn’t fight better when fighting in the southpaw stance. It’s all show without any real positive effects.
Crawford’s movement won’t help him against Spence. Spence is good at cutting off the ring and attacking the body of his opponents. If Crawford wants to run from Spence, he’s going to get speared to the body and he’ll get trapped. In this day and age, running isn’t going to help you become a better fighter. You can’t win rounds running from your opponent. Being elusive is seen as running by the judges, and there’s little chance that Crawford can run his way to victory against Spence. If Crawford wants to beat Spence, then he’s going to need to do it by standing his ground and fighting. If he can’t do that, then he’s going to get beat.
Spence is viewed as the next Floyd Mayweather Jr. by a lot of boxing fans. I don’t think it would be good for Crawford to stand in the way of Spence now or at any time in the future. Spence is like a locomotive steaming straight ahead. You don’t want to get in front of that locomotive. I think Crawford would be wiped out no matter what he tried to do against Spence. He could run, switch stances, and try every trick in the book. None of it will work. After Spence knockouts Crawford, Jeff Mayweather can try and figure what happened. If he’d just listened to me he would have realized that Spence is just too good for Crawford. But like I said, I doubt that Spence and Crawford will fight. I think Arum will keep Crawford fighting mainly guys from his Top Rank stable for as long as he’s under contract with him.