It didn’t take long for Errol Spence Jr. to realize how close he came to losing everything.
The unbeaten and unified welterweight titlist humbly admits that his recent car accident completely changed the life he nearly lost in the single-car crash last October in downtown Dallas. Spence suffered multiple injuries from which he’s fully recovered and is back to no-contact training, but what he also learned to repair was what was slowly deteriorating on the inside.
“That car accident was eye-opening for me,” Spence (26-0, 21KOs) admitted on the most recent installment of Showtime’s All the Smoke podcast co-hosted by former NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson. “I told myself, ‘You’re trippin’ now. You saying all this stuff, you say you doing it for your family, you want to be great, you want to be a legend, then get back on you’re A-game.
“It was a blessing. It put a lot of things in perspective. I was so on a high, I was flawless so to say. It pulled me down, it knocked me down.”
The accident came just two weeks after the Desoto, Texas-based southpaw solidified his place atop the welterweight division with a spirited split decision win over Shawn Porter (30-3-1, 17KOs). Their thriller of a welterweight title unification bout—which took place at the Staples Center in Los Angeles—capped a brilliant 2019 campaign for Spence, who six months prior pitched a 12-round shutout over previously unbeaten Mikey Garcia (40-1, 30KOs) at AT&T Stadium, home of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys.
With the two wins came accolades as the best welterweight in the world and among the top pound-for-pound entrants in the sport today. As it turned out, the only one who wasn’t impressed was Spence himself.
“Right at the time [of the accident], I was taking a lot of stuff for granted,” admits the 30-year old southpaw. “I was heading that way, I was heading down that path, towards self-destruction. I was taking a lot of stuff for granted. Even the Shawn Porter fight, it was showing that I was slacking off all stuff.
“Even the Mikey Garcia, I beat him all 12 rounds and I won every round. but the power wasn’t there. I should’ve finished him but the power wasn’t there because I was trying so hard to make weight. The day of the weigh-in, I was sitting in the sauna for an hour and I didn’t sweat. I had a sauna suit on… my hoodie… I didn’t sweat until I was like an hour in there just to make weight. Then I could only go up 10 pounds.”
Between the near-fatal crash and the current coronavirus pandemic which has left much of the world in quarantine, Spence has used the time as a period of self-reflection. Already removed are the bad eating habits in between fight—and by his own admission, often during camp. Also stripped away these days is the belief that his actions don’t come without consequence.
“I had to look at myself in the mirror,” Spence humbly revealed. “A lot of guys, they get in an accident or do something wrong, they don’t look at themselves in the mirror. Someone else do something and they’ll put the fault on them, the blame on them and critique that person. When it’s time to critique yourself, a lot of guys won’t do that.
“It’s tough. I had to do that to myself. I’m the hunted right now. There’s a lot of games behind me like I was, and they coming up behind me. There’s an X on my chest and they trying to knock me off.”
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox
