By Jim Calfa: Terence ‘Bud’ Crawford’s trainer Brian ‘BoMac’ McIntyre wasn’t holding back his thoughts about Errol Spence Jr after defeating him by a ninth round stoppage last Saturday night.
Sounding a lot like a classic example of a sore winner, BoMac tore into the former IBF, WBA & WBC welterweight champion Spence (28-1, 22 KOs), calling him “slow” & “basic” and saying that he made many mistakes that made Crawford’s job easier with his three knockdown performance.
Spence did look slow, but he also looked weight drained to an extreme level, and that’s something that BoMac didn’t mention.
It’s understandable why he failed to mention this because it would take credit away from Crawford’s victory if he’d admitted that Spence looked drained from having taken off a tremendous amount of muscle & water weight to get down to the 147-lb limit.
When you compare how Spence looked in his past fights to how he appeared last Saturday night, you can see that he was considerably weaker & slower.
Spence had been out of the ring for 15 months, and he’d blown up in weight, looking close to 200 lbs during that time.
Spence was “slow” & “Basic”
“He’s basic. Remember in Spence’s last interview where he said he’s good at fundamentals, ‘I’m fundamentally sound?’ You can break that s**t apart, and then after the first round, he was slow as s**t,” said Crawford’s trainer Brian ‘BoMac’ McIntyre to Fighthype about Errol Spence Jr.
“He’s got that will and determination, but if you keep going upside his head. He was slow. The counters were as fast as s**t, though. He was basic.”
Spence looked like a fighter that had put himself beyond his limits in taking off weight to get down to 147, and he was too weak to put up much of a fight after draining down.
If Spence believes moving up to 154 is going to be the answer to his problems, he could be kidding himself because that’s only seven pounds, and it won’t be enough of a cushion to prevent him from being weight drained again.
Whether Spence wants to admit it or not, he’s a 160 or 168-pounder now, and that’s where he should be fighting. However, Crawford won’t go along with fighting Spence at middleweight and above. So he has no other choice but to fight him at 154.
“Look at all of his fights. He starts with a jab, and he hardly brings his feet with him when he goes to the body. This is where he f***ked up. His legs were too far apart,” said BoMac about Spence.
“So he would bring his height down, and when you bring your height down, you start reaching the fighter because your legs are too far apart.
“His feet were slow, his movement was slow, and his hands were slow. So that just made work perfect. In the second round, I said, ‘This [guy] isn’t as fast as you. Any chance you get to counter over the top, make it happen,'” said BoMac.
Could Spence have beaten Crawford if he wasn’t weight drained? If Spence had been faster and if his power had not been affected by his weight loss, he would have made it a much different fight.
Crawford will beat Spence at 154
“He countered over the top with a left hand and then came back with his jab, a 2-1, and that’s when he dropped him,” said BoMac about Crawford countering Spence. “He would have stopped him in the second round if the bell hadn’t clapped.
“Look at him. He was done,” said BoMac when asked if Crawford would have stopped Spence in round two. “Go look at his balance when he got up. He was done. When he got up, and the bell rang, he was still shaky. If Bud would have had another minute, he would have stopped him.”
Could Crawford have stopped Spence in round two? Probably not, but it’s not surprising that BoMac is plying Monday morning quarterback by talking ‘What ifs.’ He wants to magnify Crawford’s win.
“It was easy. Like I said before, they f***ked up and let us grow into the weight. When they [Spence] kept running and making excuses, he [Crawford] was doing nothing but growing. Once he grew into the weight class, he could go to 154.
“If they do the same thing at 154, he’s going to end up doing the same thing that he did at 147. I promise you that,” said BoMac about his belief that Crawford will beat Spence in the same way at 154 as he did at 147.
