This fighter has the look of someone who knows what's about to go down.
When I say Errol Spence Jr. will be the next big thing in
boxing, people will say I don’t know what I’m talking about. He's too green. He hasn't fought any of the big names. But if the topic
is Errol Spence Jr., they will be wrong.
He’s 26 years old but has the ring maturity of a fighter of
much longer standing. What does this mean?
It means he sees and understands immediately what the other fighter is
doing. There is no waiting period. There is no ‘feeling-out.’ He knows what to
do and immediately gets to doing it. Which is destroying.
Errol Spence Jr. has a record of 21-0 but he’s knocked out
86% of his opponents. This puts him into the category of a slugger but watch
him and you’ll see he’s a lot more than that.
He has a great sense of ring space, of positioning, that thing which
boxing commentators call “ring generalship.”
It is true he has not been rushed along but victories over
his last two opponents are instructive. His
punching power comes from both hands in punches both economical and
accurate. He stunned Leonard Bundu with
a classic left uppercut (Spence Jr. is a southpaw) and later KOd his man with
the same uppercut followed by a hard right hook.
Never in a hurry, Errol Spence Jr. knows that his opponents
will fall under an accumulation of blows if they last more than a few
rounds. It is perhaps that he knocks
people out too soon that is his greatest vulnerability (if that can even be
said to be a weakness b/c who doesn’t want to go home early?)
Some people have said that Errol Spence Jr. looked good only
if his opponents stood in front of him.
Enter Chris Algieri. Whatever may
be said of Algieri, he is athletic, hard to hit, comes to win rather than to
lay down, and had acquitted himself decently against top talent like Manny
Pacquiao. Spence Jr. looked like that
ideal boxer-puncher guy as he stalked Algieri, beat him down with thudding punches,
and forced the end of the fight early – something that Pacquiao couldn’t do.
In the same vein, Keith Thurman couldn’t get rid of Leonard
Bundu whereas Spence Jr. did – and in bone-crushing style.
I don’t really adhere to the so-and-so did such-and-such to
whatever boxer and therefore one may draw a conclusion about a different fight.
It’s more something to talk about rather than a yardstick with which one can
gauge fights. Every fighter is different and every fight is different. It’s
boxing, reknowned for its dangers and one-punch upsets.
My point is that Errol Spence Jr. is the real deal, a
throwback fighter and legit tough-guy (albeit with an engaging public demeanor
for a kid 26 years old). They are in
different weight classes but I’m putting him up there soon to follow my other
two favorite ‘new big things in boxing’ – Gennady Golovkin (36-0) and Saul
Alvarez (48-1) .
