Oscar De La Hoya already knows who he is siding with in the upcoming, mouthwatering fight between Terence Crawford and Errol Spence Jr.
Last week, it was announced that a deal had been reached for Desoto, Texas’ Spence, the WBA, WBC, IBF 147-pound champion, and Crawford, the WBO titlist from Omaha, Nebraska, for the undisputed welterweight championship on July 29 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas—a fight that has been greedily anticipated by boxing fans for at least half a decade.
De La Hoya, the head of Golden Boy Promotions, recently offered his assessment on that fight, making it clear that he believes Crawford is a slight cut above Spence.
“I think that, still, Crawford has the abilities, the boxing skill, the boxing IQ,” De La Hoya told FightHubTV. “You can see it. You don’t have to be a genius to know who is the better boxer.
“Spence, don’t get me wrong. He’s a great fighter. We built him. Golden Boy built him. So Spence has a tremendous shot at knocking him out. He has tremendous power, tremendous IQ, but I just think Crawford has better leg movement. He knows how to slip and side, move in and out, and bounce on his toes and throw punches in bunches.
“You can’t win a fight without throwing just one or two punches. If your opponent is Crawford and he throws four, five, six punches, then he’s gonna take the rounds and take the fight, just like what happened with Lomachenko and Haney. Lomachenko was throwing punches in bunches and landing almost everything. It was incredible.
“I strongly feel that Crawford and Spence, both great fighters, in my humble opinion—what do I know about boxing— is that Crawford has the better ability. He has the better arsenal inside the ring.”
Sean Nam is the author of Murder on Federal Street: Tyrone Everett, the Black Mafia, and the Last Golden Age of Philadelphia Boxing.
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