By Mark Eisner: WBO welterweight champion Terence ‘Bud’ Crawford (40-0, 31 KOs) took the painfully slow IBF, WBA & WBC champ Errol Spence Jr (28-1, 22 KOs) to school on Saturday night, stopping him in the ninth round and knocking him down three times to capture the undisputed championship at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
With Spence’s trainer leaving him out there to take a terrible beating, the referee Harvey Dock was forced to do the sensible thing by halting the contest in the ninth round to protect the battered & beaten fighter from being seriously hurt by Crawford.
Errol was getting hit at will by Crawford all night, but things got out of hand starting in the seventh. Ideally, the fight should have been stopped in that round, as Crawford knocked Spence down twice.
- Popular lightweight contender Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz (25-2-1, 17 KOs) won a close twelve-round split decision over the highly skilled Giovanni Cabrera (21-1, 7 KOs) in a WBA & WBC title eliminator. Cabrera outboxed Pitbull Cruz all night and dominated him in the 11th & 12th rounds to finish strong. However, the judges were more impressed with the short 5’4″ Cruz’s harder punches. In the eighth, Pitbull was docked a point for head-butting Cabrera. In round 11, Cabrera dropped Pitbull with a hard body shot, but the referee ruled it a slip. The judges’ s scores were 114-113 for Cabrera, 114-113, and 115-112 for Pitbull Cruz. With the victory, Pitbull Cruz puts himself in a position to challenge for the WBA & WBC lightweight titles. The only guy that Cruz wants is Gerrvonta Davis for obvious reasons. That’s the biggest payday Cruz could get.
- Alejandro Santiago (28-3-5, 14 KOs) made the 40-year-old former four-division world champion Nonito Donaire (42-8, 28 KOs), beating him by a twelve round unanimous decision to win the vacant WBC bantamweight title. The scores were 115-113, 116-112, and 116-112. Boxing News 24 scored it 117-111 for Santiago. Donaire hurt the 27-year-old Santiago with a left hook to the head in round three. However, Donaire’s poor accuracy decreased hand speed, and low punch output enabled Santiaaggi to run away with the fight in the second half, battering him. The loss for Donaire was his second in a row. He’d been coming off a year layoff after being knocked out in the second round by Naoya Inoue last year.
- In an entertaining mismatch, former Cuban amateur talent Yones Tellez (6-0, 5 KOs) obliterated junior middleweight Sergio Garcia (34-3, 14 KOs), knocking him down once and scoring third round referee’s stoppage. Tellez, 23, flattened Garcia with a left hook to the head in round three. When the action resumed, Tellez nailed Garcia at will with punches, forcing the referee to step in and halt the fight. The time of the stoppage was at 2:02 of round three. It was an impressive performance for Tellez to knock out the 30-year-old Garcia so quickly, considering he’d gone the 10 round distance in wide decision defeats against former WBC junior middleweight champion Tony ‘Super Bad’ Harrison and Sebastian ‘The Towering Inferno’ Fundora.
- Super middleweight contender Steven Nelson (19-0, 15 KOs) beat Rowdy Legend Montgomery (10-5-1, 7 KOs) by a 10 round unanimous decision. The scores were 99-91, 99-91, and 100-90.
- Super bantamweight Jose Salas Reyes (13-0, 10 KOs) beat Aston Palicte (28-6-1, 23 KOs) by a fourth round knockout. The time of the stoppage was at 1:30.
- Lightweight prospect Jabin Chollet (8-0, 7 KOs) beat Michael Portales (3-2-1, 1 KOs) by a second round knockout. The time of the stoppage was 1:58.
- Lightweight prospect Demler Zamora (12-0, 9 KOs) defeated Nokolai Buzolin (9-5-1, 5 KOs) by an eighth round unanimous decision. The scores were 80-72 x 3.
- Welterweight prospect Deshawn Prather (17-1, 2 KOs) won a narrow six round unanimous decision over Kevin Ventura (12-1, 8 KOs). The scores were 57-56, 57-56, and 57-56.
- Super featherweight Justin Viloria (3-0, 3 KOs) knocked out Pedro Barragan (4-1, 2 KOs) in the fourth round.
Tonight is the big night, with Errol Spence Jr and Terence Crawford meeting in a mega-fight in the main event for the undisputed 147-lb championship on Showtime pay-per-view for all the marbles in Las Vegas. If everything goes right, we’ll have a four-belt champion when it’s over.
Fans have had mixed thoughts on who they see winning the Spence vs. Crawford fight. In comparison, some believe that WBO welterweight champion Crawford (39-0, 30 KOs) will outsmart IBF, WBA & WBC champ Spence (28-0, 22 KOs).
Others see the relentless pressure & ruggedness of Errol being too much for the 36-year-old, whose legs & speed aren’t what they once were.
Crawford vs. Spence – who will win tonight?
The inactivity that both fighters have had over the last few years is an area of concern going into tonight’s fight. Crawford has fought just three times since 2020, mainly against lesser fighters in record-padding level fights.
For his part, Spence has been out of the ring for over a year since his last fight against Yordenis Ugas in April 2022, and that was a real war that took a lot out of both guys.
Crawford has never had a fight like that where he took that type of punishment, and it’s unclear whether he could hang in that type of battle.
“A convincing win that is punishing him,” said Errol Spence Jr to Stephen A. Smith’s channel when asked if he wants a knockout victory or if he’d be satisfied with a 12-round decision victory.
“I feel like somebody getting beat up is way worse than getting knocked out. If you get knocked out, that guy isn’t taking any punishment, especially if you get knocked out early.
“If somebody is just beating on you and beating on you nonstop throughout the rounds one through ten for eleven rounds, guys don’t come back from that. Your body is getting beat down, and your head is getting beat down, and you just blow up in each round.
“With a knockout, it’s just one shot, and you’re cool,” said Spence.
“You know how that sounds? It sounds like you want to end his career,” said Smith. “That’s what it sounds like. ‘I want to beat him down, beat him down in a way that he ain’t going to recover from.’ That’s what you’re saying Errol Spence Jr.”
“I like to break people’s will. It’s different when you break a grown man in the ring,” said Spence. “You look over at his face in the corner, and you see that you’re breaking him down little by little, especially in the first, second & third rounds where they come out tough doing their thing.
“In fourth & fifth, they’re using their heart. Then in the later rounds, they start getting a little into the survival mode, and you see lots of shots wearing them down and breaking him down. He might not even be breaking down mentally, but physically,” said Spence.
“So you want it to be where he don’t even want a rematch, like, ‘I want it done. I don’t want to face this guy again,'” said Stephen A. on what he believes is Spence’s overall objective for tonight’s fight with Crawford.
“It’ll definitely be a rematch if it’s a big event,” said Spence.
“Okay, but all I know is if somebody beat my a** for twelve rounds, I don’t want to see them twice,” said Smith.