By Chris Williams: Errol Spence Jr said last Saturday night that he will resume negotiations with Terence Crawford next year so that the two can still fight.
Spence (28-0, 22 KOs) will be fighting someone else in the first part of 2023 before he “spins the block” to restart talks with WBO welterweight champion Crawford for a fight later in the year.
What Spence might not realize is that his fight with the soon-to-be 36-year-old Crawford is past its sell-by date, and it doesn’t interest the boxing public like it might have been had it happened several years ago.
This isn’t Floyd Mayweather Jr vs. Manny Pacquiao. Crawford isn’t popular like either of those fighters was, and he’s hurt his popularity by fighting just once a year against mediocre opposition.
Spence doesn’t need Crawford
“If he did everything he could to make the fight happen, the fight would have happened. Unfortunately, he didn’t,” said Spence to Brian Custer, reacting to being told that Terence Crawford said to Showtime that he did everything he could to make the fight happen between them.
“He went about it the wrong way. If he was on the up and up and said, ‘Hey, I’ve been talking to these guys. I’m fighting this guy [David Avanesyan] for ten million dollars. It’s an easy fight. I’m going to make this money real quick.’ I’d probably let him do it. I’d have said, ‘Go get your money.’
“The way he went about it and trying to blame my side for messing up the negotiations. I feel like that wasn’t right at all. Hopefully, I can spin that block again and go to negotiations and try to fight him because it’s a fight I really want. So hopefully, we can make it happen next year.
At this point, Spence-Crawford is the equivalent of trying to sell an old movie to the public and expecting them to gladly purchase tickets. Crawford is an aging unpopular fighter who fights weak opposition annually.
If Spence doesn’t want to hurt his own popularity by getting dragged into a long negotiation process, that could take the second half of 2023 without guaranteeing him a fight.
While Spence might think the boxing world still wants to see him fight Crawford, the reality is that fight has lost its appeal altogether.
What Spence should do is wash his hands of Crawford and fight one of these fighters in the second half of 2023:
- Sebastian ‘The Towering Inferno’ Fundora
- Jermell Charlo
- Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis
- Canelo Alvarez
- Gennadiy Golovkin
- Jermall Charlo
- Janibek Alimkhanuly
- Tim Tszyu
