With the undisputed welterweight showdown between WBO champ Terence Crawford and WBA/IBF/WBC Champ, Errol Spence Jr of DeSoto seems to have been scrapped, at least for the foreseeable future. Spence and Crawford agreed to a 65/35 split in favor of the North Texan. However, there was no guaranteed purse. The entire split was based on the net revenue of the PPV's back end. A unique contract for a fight of that magnitude. Crawford asked PBC to open the books. After some dispute and controversy, the mega-unification fight fell out. Crawford has agreed to fight David Avanesyan in December. That leaves Spence, who has been inactive since April, without a fight. He is now under pressure to face two of his mandatory challengers.
The first up appears to be a 28-year-old Lithuanian Eimantas Stanionis, who holds the WBA ‘regular’ title. Stanionis is in line for Spence's super belt in the WBA's consolidation effort. Stanionis is 14-0 (9) and won the 'regular' by outpointing Radzhab Butaev at AT&T Stadium on the undercard of Spence-Ugas.
Spence could take that fight or vacate the belt and potentially fight his IBF mandatory challenger Jarron "Boots" Ennis of Philadelphia. Ennis won a final eliminator in May to put him in a position to fight Spence and is now petitioning the sanctioning body to make the fight ASAP. The Ennis defense is much more intriguing and competitive and would likely be a bigger money fight for Spence.
Spence will have a couple of options with the Crawford fight shelved for now. He could fight Stanionis and then Ennis, and should he win both, then look to make Crawford fight after that. However, that fight would likely be more than a year out. Anything could happen in such a long-time span, including one of, if not both fighters, moving up to the junior middleweight division. The next option Spence could explore is to vacate one of the two belts and then fight either Stanionis or Ennis. Should he win then he could look to make the Crawford again, should each man win. However, that would only be for three of the four welterweight straps. So, the winner of that fight would not be undisputed. The likelihood of the DeSoto native unifying all four belts has taken a major hit. Look for Spence to potentially move from 147 to the 154-pound weight class in 2023.