ACCORDING to a report Errol Spence Jr and Terence Crawford will fight this summer.
Sources have informed ESPN that the two leading welterweights will duke it out on July 29 at the T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas.
Speculation over a fight between the two has circulated for years. Should the bout come to fruition then it will be one of the biggest encounters seen this century.
Earlier this week Spence prompted buzz that he would be making a ring return soon with a photo on his Instagram account captioned “day one”. The image featured a pair of boxing gloves and led many to believe a new camp with trainer Derrick James was underway.
A “bidirectional rematch clause” has been added to the Spence-Crawford deal. This means that the loser can invoke the option of a second fight but has 30 days to do so. A return bout would then have to take place by the end of the year.
Free agent Crawford will move over to PBC (Premier Boxing Champions) for those two fights.
With 67 fights between them the clock has been running down on Spence Jr 28-0 (22) and Crawford 39-0 (30).
At 33 and 35-years-old the two boxing superstars need to get in the ring while they are still at the peak of their powers and before it’s too late.
Since his first championship success against Kell Brook in Sheffield, England seven years ago Spence has gone on to add the names of Lamont Peterson, Mikey Garcia, Shawn Porter, Danny Garcia and Yordenis Ugas to his résumé.
(Ed Zurga/Getty Images)
Crawford, too, had to travel to the UK to pick up his first belt doing so against Ricky Burns in Glasgow, Scotland. In the nine years, that followed the Nebraskan native has defeated the likes of Yuriorkis Gamboa, Viktor Postol, Jeff Horn, Amir Khan, and Shawn Porter.
Spence and Crawford’s last outings came in April 2022 and December 2022 against Ugas and David Avanesyan, respectively.
In a podcast earlier this month Spence revealed that he and Crawford had been in negotiations which included one-to-one phone calls.
“Me and Crawford are definitely in talks,” he said.
“We [were] actually on the phone probably 30-40 minutes. We probably spent 15 minutes talking about it, the negotiation part.
“We [were] getting a feel for each other basically talking about our families, everything going on and stuff like that. Then we started talking about boxing, us fighting and negotiation and things like that. It went well. Our teams are still negotiating, we still have talks, it’s going very well.”
Spence revealed that his inactivity is of no concern to him because Crawford is the only fight, he is interested in.
“I don’t take tune-ups,” he said. “I don’t care if I’ve been out three years. I’m trying to fight Crawford. I’m a man of my word. I’m not trying to fight anybody else but him. That’s part of the reason I’m sitting out because there’s this one person I’m trying to fight.”
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