By Allan Fox: Frank Martin says Errol Spence Jr is “hungry” in his camp and excited to face WBO welterweight champion Terence Crawford this month on July 29th in their 147-lb undisputed fight in Las Vegas.
Martin, who trains alongside IBF, WBA & WBC champion Spence(28-0, 22 KOs) in Texas with coach Derrick James, says his fight with Crawford isn’t going to come down to the skills that fans are raving about over Terence.
It’s going to come down to grit and who is the tougher of the two in a dogfight. In looking at Crawford’s past 39 fights, not one has been a dog fight.
When Crawford has faced fighters with power during his 15-year career, he’s always got on his bike, moved around the ring, and kept the action at a distance.
Crawford hasn’t shown himself willing to stand in the trenches and trade blow for blow with his opposition unless they were light hitters or guys that were washed up, like Amir Khan, Kell Brook, Shawn Porter, Ricky Burn, and Yuriorkis Gamboa.
Spence will need to cut off the ring on Crawford and trap him to force him into a dogfight on July 29th in their twelve round main event fight on Showtime PPV at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
“I feel like Errol is hungry, and this is a fight that he’s been wanting. It’s going to come down to coaching. It’s going to come down to who makes the fewer mistakes in that ring,” said Frank Martin to Fighthype on the Errol Spence Jr vs. Terence Crawford match-up this month.
“It’s going to come down to that grit, the bite down. I feel that Errol has all of that. So a lot of people are blinded by the skill set of Terence and stuff like that, which he has skills and stuff, but this isn’t one of those types of fights,” said Martin.
Some boxing fans see a fighter with skills and fail to look at the opposition that the guy has been facing. Without looking at who a fighter has beaten and asking oneself, ‘Is that guy any good?‘ fans get fooled into believing the fighter is unbeatable.
Is Crawford a creation of careful matchmaking? We’re going to see if Crawford is for real against Spence or just an example of a fighter matched against mediocre opposition his entire career to make him look good.
“It’s one of those fights where there are two guys who are dogs in front of each other, and one of them is going to be like, who wants it more?” said Martin.
“It might not. I know Errol, and I know the things that he’s doing. So I feel like he’s going to be 100 percent prepared and ready for whatever.
“He’s been working. He’s been working even before camp. He was working with me for my fight with [Michel] Rivera. So he’s been ready.
“We haven’t worked,” said Martin when asked if he’s sparred Spence. “He got great sparring for this camp right here, so he’ll be all the way prepared.
“I feel like a lot of things are going to be a problem for when he gets in there. It’s just so many things people don’t know and so many things they can’t see. The things that we work on. It’s just certain things that you just can’t see. It’s got to be broken down for you to understand it.
“It’s those things that I feel are going to win the fight. It’s not the obvious things that people can see. If you see a guy throwing these fast punches, these flurries, and he’s looking good, it’s not evident that you can see.
It’s one of those things that have got to be broken down to you what we doing,” said Martin.
