Errol Spence Jr. vs. Lamont Peterson – Results

By Boxing News - 01/20/2018 - Comments

Image: Errol Spence Jr. vs. Lamont Peterson – Results

By Allan Fox: IBF World welterweight champion Errol ‘The Truth’ Spence (23-0, 20 KOs) looked cool, calm and composed in taking apart former 140 and 147-pound world champion Lamont Peterson (35-4-1, 17 KOs) in stopping him at the end of the 7th round on Saturday night in their fight on Showtime Championship Boxing at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

The fight was stopped by Peterson’s trainer Barry Hunter after round 7 had ended. Hunter looked at Peterson long and hard, and then motioned to the referee Harvey Dock to stop the fight. The official time of the stoppage was at 3:00 of round 7.

Peterson was dropped in round from a left hand by Spence. That was easily the round of the fight for Peterson, because he took a lot of punishment. At the end of the 5th, Peterson’s face looked swollen and his eyes were puffy from Spence’s hard shots. Spence nailed Peterson with a lot of hard body shots and uppercuts in the round.

Spence seemed to never get out of 2nd gear tonight, as he didn’t really need to switch to his higher gears due to Peterson being so hesitant to let his hands go. When Peterson did throw punches, he was getting countered immediately by the big shots from Spence.

Referee Harvey Dock looked like he was close to taking a point away from Spence in the 4th round after he hit Peterson with a low blow. Spence had accidentally hit Peterson with low blows in the previous rounds. Peterson got away with hitting Spence with some rabbit punches in the 5th that he received no warnings for.

After hurting Peterson badly in the 5th, Spence seemed to slow the pace down in round 6. He wasn’t attacking Peterson nearly as much, and it looked like he was showing mercy. Spence didn’t go after Peterson in the round the way he had in rounds 1-5. It was as if Spence knew the fight wasn’t going to go too much longer, so he started to toy with Peterson and look for one big shot instead of hitting him nonstop with huge punches like he’d been doing in the earlier rounds.

After the 6th round ended, Peterson chose not to sit down in his corner. Peterson’s trainer Barry Hunter told him that didn’t like he was seeing. It looked like Hunter was on the verge of stopping the fight, but he opted to let Peterson go out for one more fight. Peterson’s eyes looked swollen, and it was obvious he was not going to go that much longer without getting knocked out.

In the 7th, Spence slowed things down even more than in the previous round. He was cutting off the ring, and showboating with the way he was moving to get to Peterson. Spence threw very punches in the round. It looked like Spence was carrying Peterson. Spence looked like he didn’t want to hurt Peterson at that point in the fight.

”I knew Lamont Peterson was a tougher fighter,” said Spence afterwards. ”He’s willing to die in there. His had to stop the fight because he wanted to keep going. Everyone knows I’ve been waiting for ‘Sometime’ [Keith] Thurman since I was 15-0. I’ve been waiting on Thurman,” said Spence.

Thurman is currently still licking his wounds from his left elbow surgery following his win over Danny Garcia last year in March. Thurman is supposed to be back defending his WBA, WBC welterweight titles in April against Jessie Vargas. Thurman says he’s not going to fight Spence in 2018.

Peterson said afterwards that he needs to think about whether to continue his boxing career or not. He wasn’t in the position to let Showtime interview Jim Gray know if he’ll continue fighting after tonight. Peterson doesn’t belong at 147. If he does choose to continue fighting, he needs to move back down to 140, because he doesn’t match up with the likes of Spence, Keith Thurman, Terence Crawford and Shawn Porter. Peterson looked pretty good against Danny Garcia a couple of years ago, but he’s not a world champion. Garcia is just a popular fighter, who carefully picks his opposition. Garcia doesn’t appear to be going anywhere either at 147. Peterson and Garcia need to return to the 140-lb. division if they want to continue to have success with their careers.

”He was getting his shots off early,” said Peterson. ”I was wanting to get to the inside and work, but he was the better man tonight. Yeah, he stayed composed. He was able to get his shots off. So far, he’s ahead of the rest,” said Peterson.

Spence’s win over Peterson wasn’t as much of a definitive wipe-out as Lucas Matthysse’s 3rd round knockout in May 2013, but it was the closest thing to that. Matthysse was just too powerful for Peterson in that fight in knocking him down in round 2 and twice more in round 3. Spence didn’t jump on Peterson in the same manner tonight. It was more of a methodical beat down by Spence, who didn’t look like he was in any kind of hurry tonight to hand Peterson’s his 4th career defeat. When Spence did turn up the heat on his attacks at times in round 4 and 5, it looked like Peterson was ready to wilt. Spence didn’t press the fight hard enough to get Peterson out the way that we saw from Matthysse.

The way that Spence looked tonight, he looks too powerful for guys like Terence Crawford. I don’t think that Crawford could hang with the size and the overall strength of Spence right now. Unless Crawford goes on a weight lifting program to put some badly needed muscles on his wiry frame, he’s simply going to be too weak and fragile to hold up to the much stronger Spence. The power difference between the two fighters is substantial. Crawford’s promoters at Top Rank might want to hold off matching him against Spence for a couple of years until he fills out and shows that he has the frame to handle being inside the ring with Errol.