Jermell Charlo is picking Errol Spence Jr to knockout Terence Crawford by the sixth round on Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Charlo trains at the same gym in Dallas as Spence (28-0, 22 KOs), so he knows what he’s capable of doing.
(Photo credit: Ryan Hafey/Premier Boxing Champions)
Crawford (39-0, 30 KOs) is the oddsmaker’s favorite to win, but they’re making their pick based on the assumption that he’ll be able to do with Spence what he did against lesser fighters like David Avanesyan, Amir Khan & Shawn Porter.
Spence will be putting a lot of pressure on Crawford, trying to force him to brawl with him. If the 36-year-old Crawford’s legs fail him, he will be forced to beat Spence in the trenches, and it’s questionable whether he’ll last long in that type of fight.
“He trains too hard to lose. He’s an overachiever. He’s the best in the game right now at 147,” said Jermell Charlo to Fighthype about Errol Spence.
“I want a kid that is watching me fight on Youtube in 15 to 30 years from now saying, ‘I want to have a fight like Errol Spence & Terence Crawford. I want to be in one of those fights,'” said Errrol Spence Jr to Sporting News.
“I’m definitely okay with a first round knockout because as they say, ‘You don’t get paid for overtime,’ and you’re losing brain cells as the rounds go.
“If it can go in the first, second, or third rounds, I wouldn’t mind it. But not in the first round because we got to keep them buying the Showtime pay-per-view. So in the second, third, or fourth round, it can definitely happen.
“That’s the same thing with me when I was 14 or 15 years old and I was watching Ray Leonard and Tommy Hearn, watching all these old school fights. I remember watching Evander Holyfield’s fights, thinking, ‘I want to have a fight like that in a legacy-defining fight.’
“How the press conference was and just the stuff before the actual fight. It was great, and to have a kid 20 or 30 years from now,” said Spence.
“One of two things are going to happen. It’s going to be a silent agreement of, ‘Here we are, let’s go,’ or one of them is going to say, ‘Meet me right here,’ and the other one ain’t going to back down,” said Shawn Porter to Premier Boxing Champions on how the Spence vs. Crawford fight will play out.
