Errol Spence Jr. doesn’t think he has gotten under Shawn Porter’s skin by continually calling Porter a dirty fighter.
The way Spence sees it, Porter knows that better than anyone the WBC welterweight champion has fought.
“I’m not the first person to call him dirty,” Spence said Tuesday on a conference call. “I’m sure about that. Everybody knows. I don’t know if he’s a dirty fighter, but he has a dirty style. So, I mean, a lot of elbows and things like that. I think if he’s a realist, he knows he’s dirty. So, it works for him. He has to do it for a reason. So whatever works, he doing it.”
Spence repeatedly has stated that he’ll retaliate if the physical Porter fouls him in their 12-round welterweight title unification fight September 28 in Los Angeles. Porter indicated earlier on the conference call Tuesday that Spence’s comments about his style show that he’s not fully focused on the task at hand.
Spence disagrees. The unbeaten IBF welterweight champion feels he simply is honestly answering reporters’ questions about Porter’s tactics.
“I’m not really worried about it,” Spence said. “I think a lot of times he does it with fighters that, you know, where he’s stronger than. You know, with [Yordenis] Ugas he wasn’t, you know, dirty like that. With Danny Garcia, he wasn’t dirty like that, either, so I think the fighters that he can just push around, you know, he gets real dirty with them, like how he did with Andre Berto. So, I’m not really concerned with his dirty tactics.”
Porter edged Ugas by split decision and beat Garcia by unanimous decision in his past two fights.
The Akron, Ohio, native won the then-vacant WBC 147-pound championship against Garcia a year ago at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The Las Vegas resident made his first defense of that title versus Ugas on March 9 at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California.
Porter (30-2-1, 17 KOs) and Spence (25-0, 21 KOs) will headline a FOX Sports Pay-Per-View show a week from Saturday night at Staples Center.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
