T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas - Terence Crawford (40-0, 31 KOs) became undisputed for the second time on Saturday night, when he dropped Errol Spence (28-0, 22 KOs) three times and beat him down for a stoppage in the ninth to unify the WBO, IBF, WBA, WBC world welterweight titles.
Crawford had been a former world champion at lightweight and an undisputed champion at junior welterweight.
“Like I said before, I only dreamed of being a world champion. I’m an over-achiever. Nobody believed in me when I was coming up, but I made everybody a believer. I want to thank Spence and his team because without him none of this would have been possible," Crawford said.
“[The win] means everything because of who I took the belts from. They tried to blackball me. They kept me out. They talked bad about me. They said I wasn’t good enough and I couldn’t beat these welterweights. I just kept my head to the sky and kept praying to God that I would get the opportunity to show the world how great Terence Crawford is. Tonight, I believe I showed how great I am.”
Crawford dropped Spence at the end of the second round. He then dropped him two more times in the seventh. It was Crawford's piston jab that gave Spence the most problems.
“We practiced that. Normally in camp we do a flick and jab. But we knew that wasn’t going to work with Errol Spence because he’s durable, he’s strong. So we had to practice a strong firm jab. The jab hit him and stopped him in his tracks," Crawford said.
“It was a good stoppage. I was on the verge of coming back with some hard shots. Everybody knows I’m a great finisher. The ref did what he was supposed to do to protect the fighter.”