“The Truth” couldn’t lie.
There was a point late last year while recovering from injuries suffered during his scary car accident when Errol Spence Jr. thought he wouldn’t be able to box again. Spence spent more than a week in a Dallas hospital, some of that time in its intensive care unit, while recovering from cuts to his face and body and damage to his teeth.
The 30-year-old Spence considers himself lucky that the injuries he sustained weren’t worse when his speeding Ferrari flipped over multiple times in the early morning hours of October 10 in downtown Dallas. But the IBF/WBC welterweight champion told Showtime’s Brian Custer during a recent episode of his podcast, “The Last Stand,” that he still felt so much pain once he was released from the hospital that he began believing that he wouldn’t be able to continue his boxing career.
“When I was hurtin’, it creeped into my mind,” said Spence, who was charged with driving while intoxicated as a result of his accident. “I can say like November, December, I was like, ‘Man, I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to box again. I’m hurtin’ like bad.’ And then when like January came around, because I was already running [in] like December, I was already running a little bit, but my hip was still hurtin’, but I was still running. And then around January, February – like right now, I have no pain at all. And that’s when I really felt good. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m gonna come back. I’m gonna come back guns blazing, too.’
“Like a lot of people are writing me off right now. I want them to keep writing me off. I want them to keep saying I’m fat and, you know, I look out of shape, I look overweight and things like that. Like, right now I look small right now. Like I’m getting there. And um, I just want everybody to keep doubting me. It’s just fuel to the fire. But at one point, I did think I wasn’t gonna come back. Like when I was like super in pain, I was like, ‘I don’t think I’ll come back.’ I was like, ‘I’m about to take Brian Custer’s broadcasting job.’ ”
Spence (26-0, 21 KOs) has worked diligently in recent months to get his weight down, so that he isn’t too heavy when he starts training camp for his next fight. The DeSoto, Texas, native could face Philadelphia’s Danny Garcia (36-2, 21 KOs) when he returns to the ring sometime in the fall.
The next hurdle he’ll have to clear, though, is learning how his mouth and face react to sparring. The 2012 Olympian doesn’t expect to spar until “probably August, September.”
“Right now, I think I’m a hundred-percent back,” Spence said. “Yeah, I think I’m a hundred-percent back. I haven’t sparred yet. That’s something I can’t do because I have two posts in my mouth now. And they already healed up. I’m about to get a third post in my mouth. And then, after all that heal up, then I’ll be able to spar.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.