I have no idea what is going on in boxing today. This year is the year most women divorce their guys because they just won’t stop watching boxing. The reason is unlike any year in recent memory, their have been a slew of top matchmaking that are aligning the best versus the best. It started with Garcia v Davis and then the damn (or maybe DAMMMM!!!) just broke and the fights were on. This is a year to remember for boxing enthusiasts. I can’t remember a year this good of matchmaking since….. I can’t remember a year this good. I started this year at 179 pounds but I like donuts or chips ahoy with big fights so when I yell at the TV screen, telling one person to knock his ass out, I need to see donut bits flying all over the place or it isn’t a real fight. I weigh 192 pounds today so it has been a real good year for boxing. While that last statement is partially true it goes to show you how good boxing has been. The best part about it is there is more still to come, like on Saturday, July 29th, when two of the biggest stars face off for welterweight supremacy, Errol Spence Jr. versus Terence “Bud” Crawford… The welterweights, for some reason, has been a historic division since the hey days of the best boxer ever to lace up his gloves, Sugar Ray Robinson. Even though most of his memorable fights came at 160, he is still the best at 147 of all time. The last time we had an event of this magnitude at this weight was when De La Hoya fought Trinidad. That was way back back in 1999. There are worth while fights after that but nothing generated the buzz of that fight until now. This fight, as I see it, with my dirty bifocals, ha, not anymore, laser surgery is a great invention, is going to be a king maker. The winner will be boxing royalty. Who is the winner going to be you ask….. how the hell am I suppose to know, that is pretty much the consensus of all the boxing experts and of course, my favorite is, I’ll let you know on the 30th. That being said lets break down the fight that should break PPV records, I personally bought it twice, that’s a joke, Showtime wouldn’t let me.

We’ll look at Errol Spence Jr first as he sports an undefeated record of 28-0… 22 big wins coming from man down syndrome. Spence, pictured above on the left in a deadly game of thumb wars, is a non-stop pressure fighter that makes the Energizer bunny jealous. Spence wears his opponents down with heavy punches to the torso and head. You can literally see the energy bar above his opponents head wither away like in a video game. He’s a human volcano, in the sense that volcanoes are formed by intense pressure. For Spence to get the victory tonight though, he’ll need more than just applying pressure, he’ll need to be able to absorb big shots and evade the knock out shots. To do this he’s going to have to make sure that Crawford doesn’t plant those feet and unleash. He’s going to have to turn Crawford so Crawford will need to keep resetting to get those concussive shots off. Spence will also need to invest to the body heavily and often. He has to sap Crawford’s energy, but this is what Spence does, so his gameplan should be to do what he does… His weakness… I have no idea. I have never seen Spence hurt and if he was, he hid it really well. Spence’s expression rarely changes. He has the look of the guy that hid your keys and is smiling while you are losing your head looking for them. Best poker player ever. His only thing is that his hand speed is not as quick as Crawford’s. That might play a role in this fight, depending on how Crawford adjusts. If they stand right in front of each other, it’s likely that Spence will get the victory. The closest fighter that I can compare Spence to is Rocky Marciano or Marvin Hagler… two go forward fighters that hit like “tu mama” when you she caught you looking at dirty magazines.

Now, a look at Terrence “Bud” Crawford who sports a 39-0 record with 30 big wins coming from chin inspections that failed the test. Crawford, pictured above doing the Delta Tau Chi secret handshake (let’s see who can guess that one without using the internet) is a quick twitch forceful fighter that can hurt the other fighter in a moments notice. He has the ability to change the course of a fight in a few seconds and you can literally see it happen as the other opponent suddenly wonders why someone gave Crawford an aluminum bat in the middle of a boxing match. For Crawford to be victorious today he has to change his game plan a little. He has to force the bigger Spence to follow the puncher, which Spence, as sure as hardly anyone reads this blog, will do. But Crawford must not just stay there after that, he has to unleash those quick twitch strikes, and then move before Spence gets those energizer drums rolling and reset and have Spence come to him again. He has to do this in a consistent basis and hit Spence with those forceful punches until Spence becomes wary of coming in and then the fight is his… because he would have done something no one else was able to do, to make Spence hesitant. Once he has Spence thinking about those shots coming in and make him hesitant to apply pressure, then he won the fight and might score the knock out. Sounds easy right, well, it’s as easy as stopping a volcano, there really is no way to do it unless you are the best in boxing…. So lets see. AS for Crawford’s weakness… ditto to Spence’s, none that I can see… the only thing that might hamper him is that he is the naturally smaller guy.

Good luck to these two combatants, truly nice guys but definitely no push overs. It’s going to be a hell of a fight.