Demetrius Andrade challenges Errol Spence to come to 160 for fight

By Boxing News - 04/14/2019 - Comments

Image: Demetrius Andrade challenges Errol Spence to come to 160 for fight

By Mark Eisner: WBO middleweight champion Demetrade Andrade (27-0, 17 KOs) says IBF welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr. (25-0, 21 KOs) is a “one dimensional” fighter, who just relies on punching power, and he says he would give him a title shot if he moves up two weight classes to challenge him for his WBO belt. If Spence takes Andrade up on his offer and beats him, then he’s going to ruin his dreams of a fight against Saul Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin. Andrade might want to think twice before offering Spence a fight.

Andrade, 31, doesn’t think much of Spence’s talent, and he notes that he couldn’t even knockdown WBC lightweight champion Mikey Garcia last month after the smaller fighter moved up two weight divisions to challenge him for his IBF 147 lb title on March 16 on Fox Sports pay-per-view. Based on how Spence performed against the previously undefeated Garcia (39-1, 30 KOs), Andrade says WBO welterweight champion would beat Errol with his boxing ability.

Andrade says he’s ready to face Spence, 29, as soon as he’s willing to come up to 160 to fight him. Spence recently said he would move up to middleweight to challenge WBA/WBC 160 lb champion Saul Canelo Alvarez if the fight were offered to him. Canelo hasn’t offered Spence the fight, but Andrade appears to be interested in facing him.

“I’m going to go with [Terence] Crawford,” Demetrius Andrade said to Fighthype in predicting a victory for Crawford over Errol Spence Jr. in the future. “Definitely he can box, he can take a good shot, and he knows how to move in the ring and use the ring well, and he got good ring generalship,” Andrade said.

There’s no point in talking about a fight between Spence and Crawford right now, because that fight isn’t on the table. The fight that is taking place is Crawford vs. Amir Khan (33-4, 20 KOs) next Saturday night on April 20 on ESPN pay-per-view at Madison Square Garden in New York. Crawford, 31, can’t be a glutton right now in thinking about two fights at once, because he still needs to take care of Khan, who has upset in mind in going after the Nebraska native. Spence has a number of fights in front of him in the near future in terms of unification matches against WBC welterweight champion Shawn Porter, WBA Super World champion Keith “One Time” Thurman, WBA ‘regular’ champion Manny Pacquiao and Danny Garcia.

Those fights easily could use up the remainder of 2019, all of 2020, and potentially half of 2021 if not more, depending on whether Spence fights rematches against those guys. We might be two years away from a Spence vs. Crawford fight. By that point, Crawford will be 34-years-old. While that’s not old, it’s also not young. Spence will be 31, and likely still in his prime. Crawford needs to keep winning for the next two years for him to be in position to fight Spence, because right now the fight doesn’t make sense from Errol’s perspective.

With Errol, he’s kind of a one-dimensional guy right now. He’s relying on his power so much,” Andrade said. “It’s kind of funny. You knocked down Kell Brook and Chris Algieri, a few other guys, but you DON’T knock down Mikey Garcia. That tells me that he’s not the special fighter that we all thought he was,” Andrade said.

It didn’t look like Spence was even trying to knockout Mikey last month. Spence said it himself that he wanted to go out and beat Mikey by a decision to show the boxing fans how good of a boxer he is. Spence wasn’t going to get credit if he’d gone out and obliterated Mikey like a lot of boxing fans thought he would do, because the fans would attribute his knockout win on his size advantage. So instead of Spence looking to KO Mikey, he focused on boxing him, and avoiding his shots. one got the sense that Spence could have knocked out Mikey if he’d truly wanted to.

“Errol Spence wants to fight somebody two weight classes under him. Tell him to come up to 160. I’ll put the belt on the line. Of course, I’m a champion,” Andrade said when asked if he would defend his WBO middleweight title against Spence.

Spence probably would take Andrade up on the offer to come up two weight classes to fight him at middleweight if he didn’t have any good options for important fights at welterweight.

There’s still five good fights for Spence at 147 against these fighters:

1. Shawn Porter

2. Manny Pacquiao

3. Keith Thurman

4. Danny Garcia

5. Terence Crawford

You can even include Amir Khan and Yordenis Ugas as potential interesting fights for Spence in the future. If Andrade were a big name at middleweight, then Spence would likely move up in weight to take him up on his offer of giving him a title shot. Unfortunately, Andrade has failed to take his career to the next level to become a big name for fighters like Spence, Thurman, or Pacquiao to want to move up two weight classes to fight him.

“I can only get in the ring with whoever’s available and who wants to get in guys that want to get in the ring with me,” Andrade said in talking about his opposition. “The guys that get in with me are pretty tough guys. Artur [Akavov] wasn’t a pushover. He gave Billy Joe a hard fight,” Andrade said.

Akavov (19-3, 8 KOs) didn’t look good in his recent fight against Andrade last January in getting stopped in the 12th round. The 5’8″ Akavov looked too small to be competitive. Andrade hasn’t fought anyone that you can call a good fighter.

Andrade’s best wins have come against these fighters:

– Vanes Martirosyan

– Jack Culcay

– Artur Akavov

– Willie Nelson

– Brian Rose

– Alantez Fox

The only decent fighters on Andrade’s resume is Culcay and Martirosyan, and those fighters made it to the 12th round against him. Gennady Golovkin recently knocked Martirosyan out in the second round last May. Martirosyan dropped Andrade in the first round of their fight in 2016.

“But Billy Joe Saunders, I was trying to make a fight with him,” Andrade said. “What did he do? He went up to 168, thought he was going to fight for a belt. Now look at him. Now it’s unprofessional for me to even chase him, because he’s being unprofessional. I can name all these guys, but they’ve got to want to get in the ring with me too…Everybody wants to fight Canelo. Is he that good or is it the possibility of getting paid rather than being able to beat him? I understand it’s about money. We want to get paid, but what’s your legacy going to be? Beating Rocky Fielding, that’s his legacy,” Andrade said.

Canelo has obviously done a lot more than just fight Rocky Fielding. Canelo has fought Golovkin, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Shane Mosley, Erislandy Lara, Austin Trout, Amir Khan, James Kirkland, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., Josesito Lopez, Miguel Cotto, Alfredo Angulo and Liam Smith.

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