WBO champ Terence “Bud Crawford (40-0, 31 KOs) made it look embarrassingly easy, beating IBF, WBA & WBC champ Errol Spence Jr (28-1, 22 KOs) like a drum on Saturday night, scoring a ninth round TKO victory to become the undisputed champion at 147 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
With his face looking in bad shape, Spence was pulled out by the referee in the ninth round due to his nonstop shots from the highly accurate Craword, who literally couldn’t miss at that stage of the fight.
Spence down in rounds two and twice in round seven. Had Crawford stepped on the gas in the eighth, he likely would have finished the fight in that round because Spence looked in bad shape and wasn’t able to defend himself.
The victory for the 35-year-old Crawford makes him a two-division undisputed champion, the first male to have accomplished this feat.
Late in round two, Crawford knocked Spnce down with a hard jab to the head, which caught him while he was coming forward and not expecting to be hit.
Errol came back strong in the third, landing some big shots to the head & body of Crawford, but his punches had no effect on him.
Spence’s hand speed, which has never been particularly fast, looked very slow tonight, making one wonder whether the year out of the ring and war that he had a year ago against Yordenis Ugas took something out of him, leaving the shell that we saw tonight.
Starting from the fourth round, a motivated-looking Crawford began to tee off on Spence, hitting him with powerful punches to the head and dominating like no one had ever done before.
That was arguably a watershed moment of the fight because, from that point on, Spence was taking oneway punishment from Crawford and not competitive in the slightest.
What was surprising is that after the round ended, the ringside doctor came over to Spence’s corner to check his condition because he’d taken a lot of heavy punches from Crawford. That wasn’t a good sign.
Spence continued to get beaten up in the fifth & sixth, and he was getting picked apart by Crawford with his jab & power shots.
In the seventh, Crawford knocked Spence down early with a right to the head. In the final seconds of the round, Crawford dropped Spence for a second time, nailing him with a big left hook to the head.
Spence now has a big decision to make on whether to use the rematch clause in the contract to force a second fight because it would seem like a waste of time, given how one-sided this fight was. Moreover, it likely won’t sell because boxing fans will see it a not worth paying for.