Unified welterweight champion Errol ‘The Truth’ Spence says he will delay his return to the ring until possibly the summer of 2023 due to his recent car accident.
IBF/WBA/WBC 147-lb champion Spence (28-0, 22 KOs) states that he received bumps & bruises from his accident in which a 14-year-old driver crashed into him.
Before the accident, the 32-old Spence said he’d planned on announcing his next fight, but now those plans have changed.
Spence isn’t saying who his next opponent will be, but it won’t be WBO 147-lb champion Terence Crawford. That’s a fight that Spence hopes to make later in 2023.
For Spence’s fight next year, he’ll likely face a top 10 opponent because he said to ESNEWS last Saturday night that he “doesn’t believe in taking tune-ups.”
Fans would like to see Spence fight Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis or Keith Thurman, but it’s not likely to be either one of those two.
We’ll probably see Spence take a fringe-level contender like Alexis Rocha, Radzhab Butaev, or Jesus Ramos. Spence may not want to call it a tune-up, but it’ll be perceived as just the same.
Given layoff, Spence won’t want to risk it by fighting someone that could give him problems like Boots Ennis or even a past-his-prime Thurman. When you’ve been out of the ring consistently for the last two years, like Spence, even a faded Thurman could be a problem.
“Probably around May or June, April, May or June. I just got to talk to my team, and hopefully, I recover 100%. I’m sure I’ll recover 100% because I’ve been in worse accidents,”‘ said Spence to Showtime last Saturday about when he’ll fight next.
“Hopefully, I’ll talk to my team, and we’ll come up with a date that suits both of us, and we’ll make it happen,” said Spence.
Fighting in those months would mean Spence will be coming off a one-year layoff. It would be big of Spence to do the right thing and vacate his three titles so that his belts can be actively fought over rather than him competing on a yearly basis, as we’ve seen from him since 2020.
“I was going to have a fight announcement three or four days after my accident, but stuff started hurting, so we pushed it back. We’re going to wait on the announcement,” said Spence.