Spence: I did something Pacquiao and Khan couldn’t do

By Boxing News - 04/17/2016 - Comments

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By Allan Fox: Errol Spence Jr. (20-0, 17 KOs) showed tonight that the boxing world may have the replacement for Floyd Mayweather Jr. in Spence’s 5th round destruction of a very good fighter in Chris Algieri (21-3, 8 KOs) in a one-sided fight on Premier Boxing Champions on NBC from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

Algieri made a mistake in not using movement and boxing Spence. Instead of fighting Spence like he did with Ruslan Provodnikov, Algieri stood in front of him and tried to beat him at his own game by slugging. Algieri should have switched to Plan-B after the first two rounds when it was clear that he wasn’t going to be able to slug with Spence. But instead of switching to another plan, Algieri continued to slug with Spence until the fight was halted in the 5th round.

The fight was supposed to have been a competitive match-up, but it turned out to be a very one-sided contest with Spence knocking Algieri around the ring like a rag doll in winning an easy fight. In beating Spence by a 5th round stoppage, Spence accomplished something that Manny Pacquiao and Amir Khan couldn’t do in stopping the 32-year-old Algieri. Both guys tried and neither of them could do it.

Pacquiao did knock Algieri down five times in his 12 round decision win over him in 2014, but he couldn’t put him away. Tonight, Spence knocked Algieri down four times and got the stoppage in the 5th. Spence used his powerful attack to knock Algieri down in the 4th and twice in the 5th round before the fight was stopped. Algieri was well beaten by the time the fight was halted and there was little chance that he could have continued fighting because he was taking a beating.

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“It meant a lot to get the stoppage,” said Spence Jr. “I did something Manny Pacquiao and Amir Khan couldn’t do. That shows where I’m at in the welterweight division.”

The way that Spence fought tonight, he would have run over both Pacquiao and Khan with his fierce body and head attack. Spence appears to be a better fighter than both of those well-known fighters, as he’s a natural welterweight and not someone that moved up in weight from the lower weight classes.

This win for Spence, 26, was his coming out party to the boxing world. It showed the casual and hardcore fans that there’s a new kid in town and he’s going to be the one that runs things in the welterweight division. With Pacquiao and Mayweather Jr. both retired now, there’s nobody that can really challenge Spence. Spence is interested in taking Kell Brook’s scalp in the near future now that he’s the IBF mandatory challenger.

Spence wants Kell Brook, and he’s also interested in facing WBC welterweight champion Danny Garcia if he can get those fights. I think it’s not probable that their mutual adviser/manager Al Haymon will put them both in with each other because he obviously realizes that if he matches them together he’ll one fighter that will have a likely knockout loss and that fighter will be Garcia.

Brook is a different story. He’s got the IBF 147lb title and he has to defend it against Spence now that he’s the IBF mandatory challenger. If Brook chooses to avoid the fight, then the IBF title will be stripped from him and either given to Spence outright or put up for grabs for a fight between Spence and the next highest ranked contender.

“It was pretty one-sided, I felt,” said Spence Jr. “I started slowly. He said he was going to take me to deep waters so I wanted to pace myself. Everyone wanted to see what I could do against a proven fighter and I blew him out of the water,” added Spence Jr.

Spence blew out Algieri, but he may have done himself a bad turn by winning so easily because the top contenders will likely be scared away from fighting him. The only way I can see Spence getting any big fights now is after he wins the IBF title. Even then, it’s probably going to require that Spence hold onto his IBF title for a long, long time before he gets the top guys to fight him.

Spence is likely going to find himself the new Gennady Golovkin of the welterweight division. Spence might have to move among weight classes like Khan if he wants to get the bigger fights, and if he wants to increase his popularity. Spence might need to fight the junior middleweights like the Charlo brothers and the middleweights. If Spence decides to fight only welterweights, then he can still become very popular. It’ll just take him longer. Haymon isn’t going to feed Adrien Broner, Danny Garcia, Shawn Porter or Keith Thurman to Spence. I don’t see that happening.

“I just wasn’t sticking to the style and the strategy like I should have,” said Algieri. “We had a couple of different styles that we were going to show him and I never stayed in one style long enough to be effective.”

Algieri used the same game plan that he used for his last two fights against Erick Bone and Amir Khan. The style worked well for those guys because they’re not big punchers, but it was a failure against Spence.

Algieri promised before the fight that he was going to go to war with Spence, but he sure made a big mistake by doing that. Algieri seems like a pretty intelligent guy, but he made a lot of mistake tonight against Spence, and he also made mistakes in his losses to Khan and Pacquiao. Algieri always seems to have the wrong game plan that doesn’t work for the opponent that he’s facing. The one fight that Algieri got it right was against Ruslan Provodnikov.

Algieri said he’s going to go back to the drawing board to rebuild for his next fight. He’s going to need to start being a little more flexible when coming up with different game plans. He can’t get stuck on using the same game plan.