Terence Crawford beats Errol Spence to become welterweight championship
He was just better tonight,” Spence says. “He was using the jab. My timing was a little bit off. He was just the better man tonight.”
The Texan adds: “He was just throwing the hard jab. He was timing with his jab. His timing was just on point. I wasn’t surprised by his speed or his accuracy. It was everything I thought.”
The contract for tonight’s fight included a two-way rematch clause that can be triggered by the loser within 30 days, although the winner will get to decide whether the fight will take place at 147lbs or 154lbs.
Spence has made no secret of his desire to leave 147lbs behind for good, opening up about his struggles to make the welterweight limit. But he doesn’t hesitate for a moment when asked whether he plans to exercise his option for a replay.
“We got to do it again,” Spence says. “I’m going to be a lot better. It’ll be a lot closer. It’ll probably be in December and the end of the year. I say we go to do it again. Hopefully, it will happen 154.”
“Like I said before, I only dreamed of being a world champion,” Crawford says. “I’m an overachiever. Nobody believed in me when I was coming up, but I made everybody a believer. I want to thank Spence and his team because without him none of this would have been possible.”
The Omaha native then reflects on becoming the first male fighter in boxing’s four-belt era to become an undisputed champions in multiple divisions.
“It means everything because of who I took the belts from,” he says. “They tried to blackball me. They kept me out. They talked bad about me. They said I wasn’t good enough and I couldn’t beat these welterweights. I just kept my head to the sky and kept praying to God that I would get the opportunity to show the world how great Terence Crawford is. Tonight, I believe I showed how great I am.”
Crawford goes on to confirm that taking away Spence’s jab was something they worked on during training camp.
“Errol Spence is a tremendous talent and he’s got a great jab,” he says. “We were worried about the jab coming in because that’s how he sets up all of his shots. Our main focus was the jab. You take away his best attribute. The rest is history.”