By Chris Williams: Andre Ward commends Errol Spence & Terence Crawford for marinating their fight and finally negotiating the match by meeting to put it together.
Ward thinks it’s a good thing that IBF, WBA & WBC welterweight champion Spence (28-0, 22 KOs) and WBO champ Crawford (39-0, 30 KOs) let their fight marinate, and he believes it’ll do well.
Boxing fans see it differently. They believe the Spence-Crawford fight would have created more interest if they had fought four to five years ago when both fighters were active with their careers, fighting twice a year, and seemingly more popular than they are now.
Spence-Crawford missed their window
The recent Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennadiy Golovkin trilogy match is an example of what happens when a fighter stops being active. The interest from fans in that fight was quite low compared to their first two contests.
Why? Because Golovkin had stopped frequently fighting after 2018 and was only competing on an annual basis against opposition that fans had no interest in watching.
Crawford & Spence did the same thing Golovkin did by fighting only once a year against lesser opposition that the boxing public didn’t want to see.
So while Andre Ward might think Spence & Crawford were smart to let their fight marinate too long, they missed their window, and the match-up won’t do as big numbers as it would have if they’d fought years ago.
Crawford & Spence deserve credit
“If everyone really knew what was going on behind the scenes and how that fight actually came about, I think a lot of people would give them guys a lot of apologies, even though I know they won’t,” said Andre Ward to Fighthype about Errol Spence and Terence Crawford.
“They should be giving them a lot more credit. The fight is one that’s going to be a great fight. I think it’s going to be an all-time great fight.
“Those kinds of wheels, those types of resumes, and that skill set, it’s impossible for it not to be a great fight, in my opinion. But how the fight got made is not getting enough credit.
“They got together off to the side, not with the suit department. The suits made it messy. The suits caused a lot of the delay. I’m not saying all of it but a lot of the delay.
“These two fighters being businessmen entrepreneurs, they got together, and they worked out and ironed out the details and then instructed their teams.
“That’s why we’re getting the fight. So for all the ‘Spence is scared of Crawford,’ and ‘Crawford is scared of Spence,’ and ‘It’s past his expiration date.’ For all of that, we need to have the same energy to praise these guys for actually getting the fight.
“Not just getting a fight but how they got the fight. We need to be asking them questions to see how they could open up there. ‘How did you put this together?’ We got to have these conversations, or it’s just going to be the same old same
old.
“‘Get in there and fight. Shut up and fight. Shut up and fight.’ Those days are over, man. I don’t mean it’s over like it’s not happening, but fighters are turning the corner, and they’re starting to realize that ‘I don’t have to go at your speed and going at my speed.’
Fans will still watch Spence-Crawford
“It’s all the pump faking about, ‘Ah, I’m not going to watch it.’ Yes, you are. In fact, that delay [for Spence vs. Crawford] made you want to
watch it even more.
“So it’s going to do numbers on pay-per-view. The gate did what it did in a matter of minutes and sponsorship. They’re winning. So their way was right. It’s like Mayweather & Pacquiao. ‘Ah, that fight happened too late.’ Did it really?
“Now, we may have lost some prime. So it may have been a more competitive fight, maybe more but from a business standpoint, Floyd was guaranteed $40-something million when it first was talked about, somewhere around there. He made$ 200 million on the back end.
So did it really happen too late?
“There were some things Floyd was concerned about in the Pacquiao camp. He got that worked out. So did it really happen too late? So I’m never going to just fit the mold and be a normal boxing guy. It’s just not what I’m called to be.
“So I’m going to have these conversations, I’m going to broach these types of things. ‘Y’all just shut up. nobody wants to hear that.’ That’s the problem. So I commend these two young men [Spence & Crawford] for how they got this done. It was a very deep, intricate negotiation.
“Spence and Crawford said it. They got it done, and then they instructed their team on what they needed to do. So that’s what I’m excited about the fight is going to do what it does, but the fact that they got this done.
“That’s a given, but the fact that they got it done, it’s a beautiful thing, man. That needs to be talked about. There need to be headlines about that. That needs to be in Money magazine.
“That needs to be talked about because they’re ready to make a lot of money, and that’s because of them,” said Ward about Crawford & Spence.
