By Allan Fox: Trainer Vergil Hunter says he heard from one of his sources that Errol Spence Jr ran Mount Charleston five miles the week before his with Terence Crawford.
Hunter believes that the combination of Spence (28-1, 22 KOs) running uphill on Mount Charleston, Nevada, and training in the high heat of Dallas & Las Vegas potentially took something out of him.
Some boxing fans that are familiar with Spence noted that he looked drained for the Crawford fight and appeared to be running half capacity or lower at 40%, giving Terence a considerable advantage, which was all he needed to get the win and look better than he actually is.
Crawford (40-0, 31 KOs) was in the cool temperatures of Colorado during his entire camp and didn’t deal with the high temps that Spence had bravely endured for his camp.
Hunter believes that we won’t know whether the combination of the heat and hill training contributed to his loss until he faces Crawford in a rematch at 154 later this year if there is a second fight. If Spence wins, you must assume that these things impacted his performance last time.
Of course, if Spence chooses to keep running steep hills up to the week of the fight and if he’s taking off massive amounts of weight in camp, he could lose the rematch with Crawford. We would never know for sure what Spence would have done if he’d not overdone it in camp.
Spence wore himself out in camp
“I could go back to some of the episodes that I saw, and again, I said about the heat factor. That training in that hot, humid Dallas Heat and then having to make weight in that hot, humid Dallas heat and then coming over to the Vegas dry heat. It’s got to take a double toll on you,” said trainer Virgil Hunter to Fight Hub TV, talking about Errol Spence Jr being drained for his fight against Terence Crawford.
“If you notice Errol after most workouts, he would flop down in front of that fan when you would look at the episodes, which means that he was just exhausted. So that means you’re leaving the gym with nothing.
“So you’re not going to come back with everything, so each day you’re leaving a little bit in the gym, you’re leaving a little bit in the gym. I don’t know if this is true, but a source told me that a week before the fight in Vegas that Errol ran Mount Charleston for five miles.
“Now Mount Charleston is high elevation. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Mount Charleston in Las Vegas. If you’ve never run hills before and you run it a week out from a fight, if you never run like that in high elevation a week out, that’s three or four or five days of recovery right there on your legs because you’re subjecting them to something one time that you haven’t done it any time during your whole camp.
“So all of a sudden, your legs are like, ‘What’s going on? I got to recuperate. So that’s not making excuses for Errol. I’m just saying these things.
“I don’t know how true it is. This is just what a source told me, but if it is true, I could definitely see it with his legs not being there on fight night a week out,” Hunter said.
Not enough rest for Errol
“That’s a little too much, but again, going back to the heat,” said Hunter. “For a fight, after you weigh in, you can replenish yourself, but it takes another level to rejuvenate yourself. You can hydrate and rehydrate, but the next step is to rejuvenate, and the rejuvenation comes from having rest days in camp, not grinding every single day.
“You have to trust your body. Once you get in condition and I’m just talking about what I used to do with Andre and things like that. I can’t say it for everybody once, but once you get in condition and you start looking really sharp in camp.
“Now you start cutting days out of the training, and you start adding rest days because that’s where the strength comes. That’s where the stamina comes, and people say, ‘Well, you got to make a weight.’ Well, that’s the day you don’t eat meat. You go vegan; you go eggs, you go avocado, you go Ezekiel toast and things like that.
“You take walks, but you rest a full day, and then you start your high intensity. You only fight for 36 minutes. So why are you in the gym for two hours grinding when all I need to be is in tip-top shape for 36 minutes, which means one hour of high-intensity training? Once I’m in top condition, usually they’ll start peaking three weeks out before Friday; here come the rest days.
“So I have a low-intensity day where I get instruction and things like that. It’s where I’m going, maybe 50, 60 percent, and that might go an hour and a half because I’m stopping and going.
“Then the next day, I’ll go high intensity straight through, hit the heavy bag, skip rope for 15 minutes straight, hit the heavy bag for 15 minutes straight, hit the pads for 15 minutes straight, do some form of ring working with my legs 15 minutes straight and I’m out without stopping.
“Just go right through it high intensity, and I’m out. So I don’t know if the training sessions were grueling. I do know that if I were in Dallas and had a fight of that magnitude, I would have gotten out of that heat.
“I already got out of there because if you’re looking at his age in the time Errol makes weight and been making that weight, it can’t be good for you to go into two different types of heat. It just can’t be.
“Crawford was in Colorado Springs. I don’t think the heat up there got no higher than the mid-high 70s this time of year. Errol is the only one that really knows,” said Hunter on whether making weight drained him.
“Crawford said he could move to 154, so there shouldn’t be anything there that is going to impede a second fight if there is going to be one. He’ll [Spence] will get another opportunity to troubleshoot the situation, and if he comes out on top, then he has a point to prove. There’s a conversation to be had about the first fight,” said Hunter.
