By Sam Volz: Showtime’s Stephen Espinoza says he was completely “blindsided” by Terence Crawford pulling the rug out from under his negotiations with Errol Spence Jr to sign for a fight against David Avanesyan on December 10th.
Espinoza states that what was really surprising to him is that he felt that they were “making progress” in the talks for a Spence-Crawford fight when he got the news of Terence signing to fight Avanesyan on BLK Prime pay-per-view.
According to Espinoza, there was no backup plan for IBF/WBA/WBC welterweight champion Spence (28-0, 22 KOs) because they were focused on the Crawford (38-0, 29 KOs) fight exclusively.
Interestingly, Espinoza says he still would like to continue the negotiations with the 35-year-old Crawford after he gets his fight against Avanesyan out of the way. However, we don’t know if Spence feels the same way.
The worry here is that if Crawford pulled out of negotiations once without warning, he’ll do it again and again, making Spence look gullible.
Having that done to you once should be enough, as Crawford should have at least tipped Spence and his promoters off that he was planning on taking another fight.
If there is a next time for negotiations with Crawford, Spence & his team need to have a backup plan of their own, and they also need to set a limit on how many days they’re willing to negotiate.
Espinoza says Keith Thurman, Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis, and Eimantas Stanionis are options for Spence’s next fight if he stays at 147.
The only reason why it would make sense for Spence to stay at 147 is if he still plans on fighting Crawford.
“I’d say it was a surprise. It was completely. It’s fair to say that our side felt blindsided by the whole thing,” said Showtime’s Stephen Espinoza to Fighthype about Terence Crawford pulling out of negotiations with Errol Spence Jr to fight David Avanesyan on December 10th.
“I know it took a long time, and it was taking a long time. But I thought we were making progress, and I certainly didn’t expect to have the rug pulled out from under us.
“The reality is, there’s a lot of interesting fights for Spence. The one thing we know about Errol, and he’s said it repeatedly, and he’s backed it up. He doesn’t do tune-up fights.
“So whatever he does, and it’s still an open question, it’s going to be a top-tier fight. It’s going to be a massive fight. Maybe it’s 47; maybe it’s 54. But the reality is, the reason I don’t have specifics for you is because there was no backup plan.
“There was no point where Errol was interested in having even a ‘What if’ conversation about what would happen if this falls apart. It wasn’t on his radar.
“There are certainly interesting fights out there. You have Keith Thurman; you have Boots Ennis, Stanionis, and others. There’s no interest in talking about anything other than Crawford. So, we want to regroup and get him [Spence] in there.
“He doesn’t want to be stagnant for very much longer. I think he’ll get moving and look, I’m still hopeful, we can put the Crawford fight back together,” said Espinoza.
