Terence Crawford’s long-time trainer Brian “Bo Mac” McIntyre says that Crawford’s July 29 clash with fellow undefeated welterweight titlist Errol Spence will be the fight for which he will be remembered when his career is over.
“I really do believe that this fight will be his legacy fight,” McIntyre told the Showtime Boxing Podcast. “It will put the icing on the cake and will give all non-believers the reassurance that he is the number one pound-for-pound fighter in the world. If you want to reach greatness, you must do things out of the ordinary to get to that point, and I know he is doing everything possible to get to that point.”
Negotiations for the bout were frequently complex and contentious, leading many fans to wonder if it would ever happen, but McIntyre explained that the two boxers themselves were the ones who pushed it over the line.
“I give 100 percent to both those guys. If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t have a fight,” he explained. “Both of them wanted to fight. Both of them wanted to achieve greatness. They agreed on all the terms. They got together like men and shook hands and got the deal done.”
McIntyre respects Spence and trainer Derrick James, but at the same time doesn’t necessarily expect to encounter any great surprises from the Dallas-based boxer.
“Like Derrick James said on the press tour, they’re grinders, they’re hard workers,” he said. “They like to grind you down and stop you in the later rounds. They really don’t phase me any, because if you bring your A game, that means Terence got to bring his A+ game. I still believe you haven’t yet seen the best Terence Crawford. So that grinding style, we welcome it, arms open. Come with that and, you know, we got a few tricks up our sleeves where that’s going to work against him.”
In contrast, he said, Crawford “can switch up, he can take the fight many different ways. He can press, he can fight you [going] backwards, he can fight you side to side. Real boxing analysts know that Bud is the better fighter.”
