While the highly-anticipated match between Gervonta Davis and Ryan Garcia met everyone’s expectations, for the most part, one key notable breakthrough that had been rumored to occur never actually happened; the announcement of an undisputed Welterweight bout between 147 lbs world champions Errol Spence Jr. and Terence Crawford.
With both Welterweights having been linked to fight each other over the past four to five years ― but especially the last couple of months, rumors had indicated that negotiations had largely been wrapped up and would culminate in an announcement at the Davis-Garcia event. However, following the end of the entire show, no sort of announcement or notice was made of a potential fight between Errol Spence Jr. (28-0, 22 KO’s) and Terence Crawford (39-0, 30 KO’s).
With both fighters’ teams keeping their cards close to their chest when it comes to officially declaring the fight, interest is rapidly dwindling if a fight would ever be announced, and the constant delays, lack of transparency, and overall secretive yet ultimately futile apparent talks between the two parties have not made things any better.
Though both fighters are arguably in the prime of their careers and would genuinely benefit from fighting each other at this stage where one could become undisputed, both Terence Crawford and Errol Spence Jr. seem to be much less loose-lipped than they had been the couple years before.
Even with Errol Spence Jr. now being a unified champion as the holder of the Welterweight WBA, WBC and IBF titles, and Terence Crawford being the division’s WBO champion, the two have yet to meet in the ring.
Recent circumstances surrounding Alexis Rocha’s (22-1, 14 KO’s) change of opponent after he was mandated to face Terence Crawford, and Keith Thurman (30-1, 22 KO’s) no longer apparently fighting Errol Spence Jr., made the fight easier to negotiate given there were no outstanding mandates left for the two champions. And though a possibility for Errol Spence Jr. to fight another opponent somewhere in 2023 would be expected given he hadn’t been in the ring since April of 2022, the unified Welterweight champion has not even indicated a return date as of yet, which would normally put his titles and risk and result in at least one being vacated by now.
Even worse, Errol Spence Jr. seemed to openly dare anyone to strip him of his titles after a response from a disappointed fan for his lack of activity over the past year, showing the privilege that some boxers have while other boxers are capable of getting stripped in as little as 3 to 6 months, as evident by a multitude of cases, the latest involving Joe Cordina (16-0, 9 KO’s) who had been forced to relinquish his title in October of 2022 after suffering an injury that would leave him unable to defend his newly-won belt within the span of 3 months.
Starting this week, it has officially been a year since Errol Spence Jr. has been in the ring. His last fight was on April 16th in 2022, when he stopped former WBA Welterweight champion Yordenis Ugas (27-5, 12 KO’s) to unify for the second time of his career.
Most rules dictate that world champions should defend their titles within a year, but the time for that has elapsed for Errol Spence Jr. despite him not indicating he had any injury that would keep him out for a prolonged time. Though exceptions can sometimes be made in these cases, in the case of Joe Cordina there was no such an advantage, despite the Brit having worked hard to return to the ring within a year and was recently rewarded for his efforts by recapturing the title he had lost.
For some reason, the IBF sanctioning body had no problem stripping Cordina because of an injury, but they have yet to apply that same principle for Errol Spence Jr. who has been out for longer without having a clear opponent in mind, and without actually dealing with any known injury.
The other sanctioning bodies ― whose belts Spence possesses ― seem to be adopting the same lackadaisical approach as the IBF when it comes to the unified Welterweight champion, which again shows the extreme bias and corruption that is going on in the sport when Joe Cordina had to be subject to some sort of punishment despite suffering an injury. Yet somehow, Errol Spence Jr. managed to skirt every sort of repercussion for his inactivity that would normally be warranted for being inactive for a long period of time while remaining uninjured.
With no one being able to force the sanctioning bodies to take an active approach to Errol Spence Jr.’s lack of activity, fans and participants of the sport will be forced to watch on as corruption continues to blatantly seep into boxing, which prevent fighters who are enthusiastic and able to compete ― as much as possible ― from earning their just rewards while other fighters can do as they please.
Even if a fight between Terence Crawford and Errol Spence would finally be announced, the latter has already violated most of the sanctioning bodies’ rules by holding on to his world titles without defending one within the past year and their bout would no longer be for undisputed as Spence would have lost at least one title.
But as referenced earlier countless of times, the corruption in boxing will remain as long as the people in charge continue turn a blind eye towards these sort of cases.
