By Chris Williams: Actor Michael Jai White says he was told by a friend who trains with Errol Spence Jr. that he didn’t have it together physically going into his July fight against Terence Crawford.
White said that Spence’s legs looked gone, and he was nowhere the fighter he’d once been. Further, he says there were a lot of people who pretended like they knew what was going to be the outcome of the Spence-Crawford fight, but they didn’t know.
Spence didn’t even look like his regular self after the fight, and that’s not because of the damage he took against Crawford. He wasn’t the same guy before or after.
Why did Spence look depleted?
Michael doesn’t say who his inside source was for Spence’s camp that told him about the physical state that he was in for the Crawford fight, but he sounds as serious as a heart attack.
What happened to Spence to cause the change? These are the obvious explanations for why he looked physically gone:
- Two car accidents
- Weight drained – trimming down from 190 lbs
- 16 months of inactivity
- Running hills in Nevada a week before the fight
As proof that Spence didn’t have it, White points out that Crawford had never looked that dominant against anybody he’d fought. But against that version of Spence (28-1, 22 KOs), who looked like a shell of his former self, Crawford looked like a knockout artist.
Before that fight, Crawford was an average-looking champion who was never all that exciting to watch.
Looking at Crawford’s struggle against fighters like Amir Khan, David Avanesyan, Jose Benavidez, Jeff Horn, and Viktor Postol, he was never a thrilling-to-watch type of guy.
There was nothing that stood out in any of Crawford’s fights as a champion in any weight class. He was just an average Joe until his fight with the depleted-looking Spence.
“I had some inside information. A good friend of mine who trains with Spence and was with Spence a month beforehand, and he told me, ‘No, Mike.’ I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘He don’t have it,’” said Michael Jai White to Djvlad Internet community about Errol Spence Jr. not looking good in preparation for his fight against Terence Crawford last July.
“I said, ‘What are you talking [about]?’ ‘No,’ he said. ‘Spence is not a shade of what he was,’ and this is before the [Crawford] fight. This was a while. He’s like, ‘I wish Spence would not take this fight. He’s not ready.'”
Has Crawford ever looked dominant like that?
“I was like, ‘Really?’ and then when I saw Spence-Crawford, I’m like, ‘Oh shoot, he don’t look like Spence,’ and then after that fight, I realized he really is not there,” said White.
“His legs wasn’t there. There was so much that was [not there]. I’m a big fan of Spence, and I followed [him], and he’s had those accidents so in sparring and the things that my friend saw that he told me a month before.
“He said he shouldn’t fight, and then you start putting it together, and you go, ‘Hmm, think about this logically. Has Bud Crawford looked that dominant against anybody?‘
“And to do that with Errol Spence, not to try to take things away from Crawford because Crawford’s amazing, but I think if you start putting it together and you go, ‘Well, yeah.’
“A lot of people are trying to go like they knew Crawford was going to do that to him. I don’t think anybody knew that. I don’t think anybody knew that, but Spence does not even seem like himself, and after that fight, it’s not because of the damage he took during the fight.
“There is a difference, a big difference. Again, it sounds like I’m taking away stuff from Bud Crawford, but so be it. I believe Spence and I believe my friend that something is quite different.
“Nobody’s seen Spence like that even in the as he first started fighting,” said White.
