Top Rank promoter Bob Arum shares his perspective on Terence Crawford and his latest win over Errol Spence with Fight Hub TV. During the talk Arum calls out the fact that Spence has a weakness against southpaws that nobody ever mentioned before the fight, but that he wasn’t at all surprised by what took place. Check out some excerpts from Arum below.
Arum on what most impressed him about Crawford’s win over Spence
“Look at Spence’s body of work, and what clue do you see there which would lead Crawford to victory? And the clue that I saw was that out of his fights — I think he had 38 fights [Editor’s note: Spence had 28 fights] — of all those fights he only fought two southpaws.
“So what does is that telling you? It’s telling you that he has trouble with southpaws because to only have two out of (28) fights, it means that his people, or himself, have looked to avoid southpaws.
“Now Terence’s big strength is that he fights equally well from either side. So instead of opening up as a right hander as he usually does and switching to southpaw, he only fought Spence as a southpaw and Spence couldn’t handle it, particularly when Crawford who is ambidextrous and now his right hand jab is throwing it with force and hurting Spence.
“So once I saw Terence come out as a southpaw, in my mind I thought ‘hey, the fight is over.’”
On if he was surprised with how easily Crawford handled Spence
“No, because Spence can’t fight a lefty. And nobody even mentioned that. He can’t fight a southpaw. If Crawford had fought him five or six rounds as an orthodox fighter, it would’ve been a different fight.”
On Crawford finally getting the recognition he deserves
“Well I don’t know if anybody dismissed him because of his ability, they dismissed him because of his drawing power or what have you. I consider Terence to be a great fighter before the Spence fight, and I consider him a great fighter after the fight. And his dominance didn’t surprise me, he is the full boat.
“Now what will eventually catch up to him catches up with all of them and that’s father time. He is 35 going on 36 so at a particular point in time, not now but down the road — he’s an athlete and athletes die young by not being able to perform up to their old level and that’ll eventually catch up with Terence.”
On if a rematch with Spence at 154 goes any differently
“Same thing. Same thing. What’s he gonna learn how to fight a southpaw now? As long as Terence fights him from the southpaw stance the result will be the same at 154, 160, 175.”
On if he thinks Crawford can perform the same at 154 against Jermell Charlo
“I really think so, yeah. I think Terence is that much of a quality fighter that he probably beats everybody at 154.”