Has Errol Spence recovered from his horrifying car crash? Freddie Roach has doubts

By Boxing News - 08/05/2021 - Comments

By Allan Fox: Freddie Roach has doubts whether Errol Spence Jr is the same fighter since his horrifying car crash in October 2019 in Dallas, Texas. Spence (27-0, 21 KOs) is going to need to be what he once was for him to defeat Manny Pacquiao on August 21st in their mega-fight at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Spence lost teeth in the accident and he’s fought just once since, looking sluggish and slow in pounding out a 12 round decision against past his prime Danny Garcia last December.

While Spence did get the victory, it wasn’t the same Spence that fans had grown accustomed to seeing, as he had a hard time against Danny in a punishing fight.

Spence flew through the windshield of his expensive Ferrari Spider during the crash and wound up hospitalized in the ICU unit for a week.

YouTube video

Spence’s Ferrari was left a pile of twisted metal, looking nothing like the gleaming automobile that it had been before the crash.

Roach saw what many boxing fans observed in Spence’s last fight against Danny Garcia, a fighter that had lost a significant portion of his game since the accident.

Whether Spence can regain the physical skills that he had before the crash is debatable. It’s fair to say if Spence couldn’t pull it all together after almost a year out of the ring recovering from the crash, it’s unlikely that he ever will.

Roach still believes Spence hasn’t recovered

“Errol Spence is a good fighter, but I’m really leery about that car accident,” said Roach to Fighthub about questing whether Spence has come back 100% from his horrifying car crash in October 2019.

“I mean, he’s lucky to be alive, but that was a REALLY bad car accident and I still don’t think that’s over,” said Roach about Spence.

It’s pretty obvious that Spence is still dealing with physical issues from that car crash. The evidence is plain to see

Image: Has Errol Spence recovered from his horrifying car crash? Freddie Roach has doubts

If you watch how Spence performed in his previous fight against Shawn Porter and compare it to how he fought against Danny Garcia, it was like watching two different fighters.

Against Danny, Spence looked slow & lethargic, just like his pattern of speech since the accident. It was sad to watch how different Spence looked compared to how he had performed in the past.

That car crash arguably took the best out of Spence, leaving him just a heavy-handed, flat-footed shell of what he was a year earlier.

Of course, I do,” Roach said when asked if he still has questions about whether Errol has come back from the accident to be the person/fighter he was before the crash.

“That was Danny Garcia. That’s not Manny Pacquiao. He looked okay in that fight but it wasn’t great. Again, I don’t feel that the accident is over,” said Roach.

Image: Has Errol Spence recovered from his horrifying car crash? Freddie Roach has doubts

Pacquiao has an excellent chance of beating Spence, and it wouldn’t have been that way if he’d fought him BEFORE his crash. Hopefully, Spence doesn’t get knocked out in this fight, but it’s quite possible that he will.