Terence Crawford and Errol Spence Jr. have disagreed about the strength of their resumes and playfully promised to “fry fish” and “smoke a Bud” while promoting their welterweight championship showdown July 29 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

The undefeated 147-pound champions have mostly, however, expressed a lot of respect toward each other since their fight finally was announced late in May. Both boxers appreciate that his upcoming opponent is a prideful family man, and they haven’t said or done anything to make the promotion of their huge Showtime Pay-Per-View event in any way personal.

Causing controversy simply to attract attention to their fascinating fight would be out of character for Crawford and Spence. That’s why there haven’t been any staged shoves, threats of pre-fight violence or even the need for promoters and/or security personnel to separate them when they went face-to-face at press conferences.

They’re completely confident that their long-awaited 12-round title unification fight should sell itself, thus they have avoided the type of often manufactured drama that their predecessors have used to hype their bouts.

Crawford hopes the buy rate for their historically significant fight reflects that he and Spence were right to have taken the promotional approach they firmly believe is the right one.

“I think it’ll be great for the sport of boxing, for all combat sports, because then it will show a level of respect that doesn’t have to be aligned with disrespect to be entertaining,” Crawford said during a virtual press conference recently. “I feel like, you know, a lotta people will see Mayweather, a lotta people see Ali and they see Mike Tyson and they feel as if, ‘Oh man, I gotta be this villain,’ or, ‘I gotta be like this guy or be like that guy to sell fights or to sell pay-per-views, and not my skills.’

“But when people start understanding the sport and they understand that you don’t have talk about somebody’s dead people, in the grave, to get him mad. And then they start talkin’ about your momma and then they start bringing up personal remarks to what you said to them, and then y’all make it personal just to sell fights. I think it can be a level of playing field where y’all both respect each other enough to, you know, respect each other but let each other know that come fight night, you know, y’all coming for each other head.”

Crawford, 35, and Spence, 33, will compete to become boxing’s first fully unified welterweight champion of the four-belt era. Spence (28-0, 22 KOs), of DeSoto, Texas, will defend his IBF, WBA and WBC 147-pound crowns against Crawford (39-0, 30 KOs), an Omaha, Nebraska native who will put his WBO belt on the line.

Most sportsbooks list Crawford as a slight favorite over Spence.

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.