A potential mega fight between undefeated unified welterweight champ Errol "The Truth" Spence of DeSoto and WBO champ Terence Crawford is not dead. reportedly the two are self-negotiating a deal to unify all four belts at 147 pounds. The good news is the mega fight that has been the talk of the boxing world for years isn’t dead yet. ESPN has reported that the superstar welterweights have communicated via phone calls, absent promoters, managers, and networks and have agreed on an undisclosed purse split.
This is obviously good news for fight fans, but it creates more questions than it answers. Who will be the promoter of the fight? Crawford and Spence had allegedly agreed on a split of the gross PPV revenue for November of 2022. Crawford alleges the PBC refused to open the books and show what money they were spending on promoting the fight, which would decrease the bottom line of each fighter. There is also no venue, date, or television/streaming attached to the fight. All of that would certainly have to be worked out prior to a fight. Those are major, not minor details.
In the interim, the WBO has ordered Crawford to fight Alexis Rocha. Spence has also been in deep negotiations with former unified welterweight champ Keith Thurman who has again been inactive for over a year. That fight, which was rumored to be at 154, as opposed to 147, never materialized. So a potential Spence-Crawford fight still has all those obstacles to overcome, plus each fighter will like to take a fight in the interim where anything could happen and Spence will have to continue to be able to make the 147-pound limit which he has seemed to outgrow.
Spence has not fought in nearly a year. His last outing was in April of 2022, he stopped Yordenis Ugas in 10 rounds at AT&T Stadium in Arlington to capture his WBA belt in addition to successfully defending the WBC and IBF belts and moving his record to 28-0 (22). Crawford fought in December and stopped fringe contenders and stopped him in six rounds to move his record to 39-0 (30). The other remaining factor is that each fighter would have to fight twice in a single calendar year, something neither fighter has done in quite some time. Crawford has fought just once a year each year since 2020, and Spence is even less active, having fought just twice since September of 2019. Spence fought once in 2020 and once in 2022.
With each fighter well into their 30s, it seems unlikely that either man, let alone both men, will fight twice in one calendar year. So, yes, there is reason to be optimistic, but it should be cautious optimism.
