After Six Long Years, Errol Spence Jr has Finally Arrived

Six years ago I identified Errol Spence Jr (28-0, 22 KOs) as a boxer with the kind of potential to be the sport’s next big star. Or, more accurately, he identified that potential in himself. Boxing, he claimed, had always come easy.

"There's a lot of guys who train hard and they just don't have it no matter how hard they train or what they do," Spence Jr. told me. "Some fighters just have it, just like basketball, people like LeBron James, of course they have a workout regimen, but at the end of the day they still just have that it in their game. They just have it. It's something they were born to do. That was me and boxing.

"When I first got to the gym, like two weeks after my first training, I was winning a tournament. I was fighting in the open class, and then I was beating those guys who had been amateur fighters for six, seven years, eight years. Been an amateur since they were like four or five years old. You know, I was beating guys, I'd knock them out just like that."

The headline for that story six years ago originally read “Will Rising Boxing Star Errol Spence Jr be The Next Sugar Ray Leonard.” Because when you write about boxing for a mainstream publication like Bleacher Report, there’s a working assumption that no one reading knows anything at all about the sport.

I can’t tell you how many times I wrote stories comparing a combat sports fighter to a legend of yesteryear or one of the few well known contemporary stars like Ronda Rousey or Floyd Mayweather. Even though he was headlining an event on NBC that weekend in 2016, Bleacher Report didn’t have the confidence anyone would have a clue who he was.

Perhaps that should have been a warning sign for PBC’s attempts at launching boxing on terrestrial television?

I digress.

Spence has been on a wild ride in the subsequent half decade, the first act of his public life ending with a devastating late-night car crash that nearly ended both his career and his life. Most, even those who feared saying so out loud, feared he’d never be the same when he returned to the ring and a lackluster bout with Danny Garcia in 2020 did little to belay those fears.

Lingering doubts didn’t stop more than 39,000 people from showing up at AT&T Stadium to see him fight Manny Pacquiao conqueror Yordenis Ugás in a bout to unify a bevy of alphabet title belts that signified little more than being second-best to Terence Crawford in the welterweight division. At the end of ten rounds, Spence emerged right back where he’d been before the accident—on the verge of becoming something special.

“I believe that you’re going to go through trials and tribulations,” Spence said. “I went through a lot of trials. I got tested and I passed the tests due to my upbringing. My mother and my father always telling me not to quit and not to give up and just believing in myself and my family. I wanted to prove them wrong, and I knew that I could come back. Why would I quit now?”

It was a masterful technical performance from Spence, who deftly avoided Ugas’ best weapon, a booming counter right, seemingly finding his way inside as if by magic. Once beyond the reach of Ugas' power, Spence dismantled his high guard with thunderous body shots and a sharp left uppercut. Only a weird exchange in the sixth round, when Spence was hurt after it appeared the referee was going to pause the action to allow him to retrieve his mouthpiece, kept the bout from being totally one-sided. The fight was stopped when the ringside doctor advised referee Laurence Cole to stop the bout at 1:44 of the tenth round, the ruin that used to be Ugas’ right eye not allowing him to continue.

If the pre-fight was defined by a complete lack of clarity about how Spence would fare post-injury, the post-fight message from the champion was crystal clear. He wants what we all want—a bout between the two best fighters in the world.

“Everybody knows who I want next,” Spence said. “I want Terence Crawford. That’s the fight that I want. That’s the fight everybody else wants. Like I said, I’m going to get these straps then go over there and take his shit too. Terence I’m coming for that motherfucking belt!”

I’ve been around boxing too long to be fully confident that bout will be made. When millions are at stake, the wrangling before the fight can be tougher and meaner than the actual contest. But there’s no doubt the time is now from an athletic perspective. Spence and Crawford are 32 and 34 respectively and appear to be in prime form. If either wants to be the kind of fighter the Bleacher Reports of the world are confident an average sports fan would know, it’s a fight that has to happen.

Photos by Amanda Westcott/Showtime