By Jim Calfa: IBF/WBC welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr. vs. WBA 147-lb champion Yordenis Ugas will be held in April at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Spence-Ugas will be a three-belt unification with the IBF, WBA & WBO147-lb titles up for grabs.
According to the DallasNews, the fight is “tentatively scheduled” for the AT&T Stadium in Texas, and the date has “yet to be determined.
Spence will be turning 32-years-old in March, he’s coming off eye surgery for a torn retina, and he hasn’t fought since beating Danny Garcia in December 2020.
It’ll be interesting to see if Spence makes it through training camp without suffering a setback with his surgically repaired right eye.
With an injury like that, Spence can reinjure it during camp.
Fighters that suffer torn retinas are sometimes unable to resume their careers. If Spence experiences another injury to the same eye, he’s going to need to make a big decision on whether he should continue his career.
By the time the Texas native Spence enters the ring against Ugas in April, he’ll have been out of the ring for a year and a half, and he’ll likely have a lot of ring rust.
Spence looked less than impressive in his fight with Garcia in 2020, so we may not see the best version of Spence against Ugas unless he trains hard.
It looks like the management for Spence (27-0, 21 KOs) and Ugas (27-4, 12 KOs) will take their time before eventually announcing the fight weeks before it’s to take place.
We saw this with the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao fight in 2015. The negotiations dragged on up until weeks before the battle.
Surprisingly, the fight still broke records on pay-per-view due to the enormous interest, but it likely would have done far better if it had been announced two to three months ahead of time like regular contests.
While Spence vs. Ugas is an excellent unification bout, it’s not a big enough one for the organizers to wait until the final weeks before they fight in April before they reveal the date. If they do that, the PPV numbers won’t be as huge as they wanted.
“Errol Spence Jr. to fight Yordenis Ugas in a unification title fight at AT&T Stadium in April. DeSoto native Errol Spence will fight Yordenis Ugas in April in a unification welterweight title fight tentatively scheduled for AT&T Stadium, according to multiple sources,” Dallas News said.
“A specific date in April has yet to be determined.”
Until the 35-year-old Ugas’s recent 12 round unanimous decision upset win over Manny Pacquiao last August, the Cuban fighter wasn’t that well known to boxing fans.
Moreover, even though Ugas defeated the 42-year-old Pacquiao, who was coming off a two-year-old layoff to send him into retirement, he’s still not a household name with casual boxing fans in America.
Before Ugas fought Pacquiao, his other notable fights were against Shawn Porter, Abel Ramos, Omar Figueroa, Ray Robinson, Thomas Dulorme, Jamal James, and Bryant Perrella. Of those fights, only the Porter match attracted any attention and not much.
You can argue the fight was on the level of the attention Porter’s fights with Sebastian Formella and Adrian Granada.
In other words, boxing fans weren’t keenly interested in the Porter vs.Ugas fight, which made it easy for them not to make a fuss later after Shawn was given a highly controversial 12 round split decision over the Cuban fighter.
The winner will hold three belts and be in a solid position to face WBO welterweight champion Terence Crawford for the undisputed championship later in the year if that’s their desire.
As you would expect, Crawford (39-0, 28 KOs) would be in a positive of weakness to negotiate a decent split, but that might make it impossible to set the fight up.
Also, it would be risky to set a fight up with Crawford, given his purse demands and his past track record in his PPV fights against Shawn Porter, Amir Khan, and Viktor Postol.
