Undisputed world welterweight champion, Terence Crawford, has paid his tributes to Errol Spence Jr following their undisputed welterweight title fight, which took place at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
For years, talk and speculation had surrounded the then-undefeated pairing as to if and when the only respective belt holders at 147lbs would face each other in one of the most desired fights in the whole of boxing.
The result was a dominant win for Crawford in nine rounds, including three knockdowns scored by the Omaha native in Crawford.
Spence Jr does have an immediate rematch clause in his favour if he chooses to activate and proceed with a rematch. Crawford has no issue with facing Spence again and paid tribute to Spence for allowing him the opportunity to fight for the undisputed world welterweight champion in the first place.
“I have to (take the rematch if Spence calls for it),” Crawford said in an interview with Hot 97. “He gave me the opportunity. Without Errol giving me the opportunity and us coming together and him agreeing to certain. Terms and me agreeing to certain terms, y’all wouldn’t have witnessed history or greatness Saturday.
“It’s only right that I give him the credit that he deserves. He’s right, he told me at the weigh-in, ’You ain’t gotta thank me for making this shit happen.’ I told him, ‘You ain’t gotta thank me either. We’re about to make history.’ A lot of people were asking me what did you mean by that.
“To be honest, if it wasn’t for Errol, this fight wouldn’t have happened. That’s what he meant by ‘I don’t have to thank him,’ because he played a big part in this fight happening because he stood on what he wanted to accomplish. And everything that it was going to take for us to fight, he stood on it, and he put his pride to the side. I put my pride to the side. There were things that he felt as if I was getting over with, but he still let it go because we need to go, and there were things I felt I didn’t need to agree to, but I agreed to it because we both knew the magnitude of the fight.”
Crawford believes that he and Spence should be given credit for lowering their contractual demands to come together and making the July 29th encounter a fight which, in fact, comes to fruition. Spence and Crawford in 2022 were close to agreeing to terms to face each other. However, those talks ultimately collapsed. Premier Boxing Champion had proposed to Spence that he meet former welterweight world champion Keith Thurman earlier this year but was rejected by Spence.
At this specific point, Crawford insists that Spence has to be given more credit than himself and has to be respected for coming back to the negotiating table and fighting him over Thurman.
“That’s why I said it was both of us (that deserve credit for the fight coming together), but at the same time, all the cards were in Errol’s hands, and he could’ve said, ‘No, I’m not giving into anything. I’m fighting Keith Thurman,'" Crawford explained. “Yeah, I gotta give him the utmost respect. I gotta pay homage to a person that came together. We made one of the biggest fights in this century.”
