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Terence Crawford is on top of the boxing world.
“Bud” put on one of the best performances of his illustrious career Saturday in Las Vegas, winning his main event bout with Errol Spence Jr. (28-1, 2 KOs) in dominant fashion to become boxing’s welterweight king. Entering the bout with the WBO title, Crawford added Spence’s WBA, WBC, and IBF belts to his collection to become the first undisputed welterweight champion of the four-belt era, which began in 2004.
When asked post-fight what it meant to claim such a momentous achievement, Crawford made it clear that it was personal to him.
“They tried to blackball me,” Crawford said. “They kept me out. They kept me out. They talked bad about me. They said I wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t beat these top welterweights. I just kept my head to the sky and I kept praying to God that I’d get the opportunity to show the world how great Terence Crawford is. Tonight, I believe I showed how great I am.”
In one of the most highly anticipated bouts of the year, Crawford (40-0, 31 KOs) made it look like a mismatch as he used a sharp counters and a power jab to completely take Spence out of his game. After a mutual feeling-out process in Round 1, Crawford rocked Spence with a stinging combination in Round 2 to put him on the canvas. It was the first knockdown of Spence’s career.
Though Spence stayed busy for the remainder of the fight, he never fully recovered, and Crawford continued to batter him with power shots. Spence wore the damage on his face to the point that the ringside physician checked to see if he could continue at the start of Round 5.
It was downhill for Spence from there with Crawford dropping him twice in Round 7 to secure a 10-7 score and then putting Spence away with a flurry of punches 9 that forced referee Harvey Dock to wave the bout off at the 2:32 mark of Round 9.
Afterwards, the previously undefeated Spence hoped that he would get another shot at Crawford in the near future.
“Hell yeah, we’ve got to do it again,” Spence said post-fight. “I’m going to be a lot better. It’s going to be a lot closer, it’s probably going to be in December, before the end of the year.”
Spence added that he’d like to see the rematch take place at 154 pounds.
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