Terence Crawford understands that Errol Spence Jr. had to backpedal on some of his demands at the negotiating table in order for their undisputed welterweight fight to become a reality.

Omaha, Nebraska’s Crawford fully unified the 147-pound division last month with a dominant ninth-round stoppage of Desoto, Texas’ Spence at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

In a recent interview with Joe Rogan on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Crawford described the laborious process that he and Spence went through to stage their high-profile fight, which fans have been clamoring for for no less than five years. Crawford said he understood that the final terms of their deal probably left Spence feeling he had given up too much.

Crawford (40-0, 31 KOs) and Spence (28-1, 22 KOs) famously were in talks last year but went their separate ways. Crawford ended up taking a tune-up fight with David Avanesyan. But the fighters circled back with each other earlier this year to see if they could hammer out a deal that both could be satisfied with. Crawford indicated recently elsewhere that Spence deserved more credit for making the fight happen.

“There was a point in time where I shifted gears and I shifted my mind off of Errol Spence because I didn’t feel like the fight was gonna happen,” Crawford said. “But once I left Top Rank, and we started negotiating I was like, ‘Oh, well, maybe this fight will happen.’ Then [I ended up fighting] Avanesyan because of the conversation and everything we was talking about to get the fight done it wasn't lining up to what I wanted so I decided to take another fight and I came back to the table, 'Hey listen, let's get this fight made.'

At the time, the fight wasn't going the way that I would have liked it to go, so I just hit up Spence, 'Hey man, listen, if you and me gon' fight, you and me gon' get this done because there's a lot of people blocking the fight.'

"Just business-wise, I felt I was worth 'x' amount and they felt like I wasn't. They wanted to do the deal a certain way and I wanted to do the deal a certain way. Errol Spence seen it. He was agreeing with everything that I said. 'We can do this, we can do that.' He probably felt like he gave up too much at the end, when it was all said and done. But I felt like everything was fair."

Sean Nam is the author of Murder on Federal Street: Tyrone Everett, the Black Mafia, and the Last Golden Age of Philadelphia Boxing.