In hindsight, stemming from Terence Crawford’s absolute domination over Errol Spence toward a ninth-round TKO, it’s hard to fathom how many fans and critics had it as a 50-50 fight going into the July 29 bout.
Appearing on The Porter Way Podcast on Tuesday, Crawford explained to his friend, Shawn Porter, how the bout was essentially won before it started by honing in on negating one integral area of Spence’s fight game.
“The fight is won in training,” Crawford told Porter. “So given the fact that we expected Errol to come out the way he did, given the circumstances that we knew what he was going to do when he was going to do it because Errol fights the same way each and every time he steps into the ring, all we had to do is take away his jab, we felt.
“We take away his jab, he becomes basic and that’s what we did on fight night.”
He sure did, riding the strategy to becoming the newly-crowned undisputed welterweight world champion.
Many sequences of the fight had Crawford taking away Spence’s jab by asserting his own power jab with snapping delivery in traffic. Once Crawford established that weapon, and “The Truth” couldn’t answer it, he began utilizing the punch to pave the way for three knockdowns toward the eventual TKO and solidifying yet another chapter in his boxing legacy.