Errol Spence Jr thinks that Terence Crawford is drunk on his past successes inside the ring against the sublevel opposition he’s faced his entire 15-year career and under the hallucination that he’s going to defeat him just like he did against the lower-level fighters he was continually fed while with Top Rank and now on his own as a promotional free agent.
Errol feels that Crawford is making the false mental leap where he thinks that because he beat Amir Khan, Egidijus Kavaliauskas, and David Avanesyan, it must mean he can defeat him as well.
Too much success, especially against fodder opposition, implants a false perception of invincibility in a fighter, destroying their ambition, skills, and hunger for hard work. They develop delusions of grandeur, becoming unbearably conceited & boastful.
Spence views Crawford as an example of that type of fighter, who has lost his way after 15 years of beating bottom feeders and falsely believes he can walk on water and defeat opposition that he’s never come close to facing during his many years in the pro game.
Spence (28-0, 22 KOs) says Crawford (39-0, 30 KOs) showed yesterday that he was “human” when he cracked up during the press conference, sounding like he was ready to go berserk for a moment when members of the audience heckled him.
“I see that he’s a human, and every human is breakable. That’s all I see,” said Errol Spence Jr to the media. “He’s underestimating everything about me.
“He just thinks that because he’s talented, that’s going to work. He’s got speed, quickness, and power, and that’s going to work. That’s not everything. You’ve got to have fundamentals, and you got to be smart.
“He’s got a great IQ when he’s moving around the ring being talented, but I feel like I’ve never fought anybody at my level,” said Spence.
Spence has shown more ambition than Crawford
“Against Crawford, it’s doing our best to be better and not so much about the size. The size will come into play, but we’re not banking on it,” said Spence’s trainer Derrick James to Boxing News.
“You got to do everything we can to take away what Crawford does. So that’s the reality. Whatever we move, we have to move to take something he’s great at.
“He’s [Spence] been inactive since last year, but he’s fought better opposition and fighting at high-level competition. It’s a whole different situation than keeping a belt [WBO welterweight title] rather than taking belts,” said Derrick about how Spence has shown more ambition to win titles than Crawford, who has been satisfied with his single WBO strap at 147.
