Make no mistake about it, this was a signature win for Errol Spence Jr.
Spence may have had bigger wins against higher-rated, more talented opposition, but his performance against a very good Yordenis Ugas at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas could very well go down as the top showing of his career thus far.
“The Truth” showed up for this semi, somewhat hometown showcase in a very big way and set about winning a fight like this the way elite-level players are supposed to win fights like this. In claiming Ugas’ WBA welterweight belt and adding it to his IBF and WBC titles, Spence beat the living lechon out of the Cuban and had him wincing with every shot by the end of the bout. It was a masterful offensive performance from one of the best offensive fighters in the game, who had not actually destroyed someone like this in a very long time.
And, now, we can stop fucking around. A clash with WBO world champ Terence Crawford has to be next. No Bullshit. No excuses. No nonsense. No Keith Thurman. No marinade. Just find a way to get this fight done. There is no other fight to be made for Spence or for Crawford.
Yeah, there are massive business obstacles to be overcome. The fighters’ purse demands will probably exceed the money that could reasonably be expected via pay-per-view and live gate revenue. So what? PBC, Team Crawford-- find a way to make this happen. You guys are the businessmen, we’re just the consumers. How fucking long do you expect us to keep buying stuff that’s “kinds, sorta” what we want? It’s time we get a payoff for our loyalty.
Spence-Ugas was a reasonable detour on the road to Spence-Crawford. Ugas had a world title and he had just beaten Manny Pacquiao. Okay. Spence was coming off surgery to repair a retinal tear and we didn’t know how all-around well he’d be. Okay.
But now we know that Spence is good and his eye didn’t pop out of its socket. Instead, he pretty much made Ugas’ eye pop out of its socket.
So, make THE fight.
Add $10 to the pay-per-view price. Double the live ticket price. Charge more for international rights. Sell more advertising. Whatever. Have a bake sale outside of PBC headquarters. Put Sam Watson and his sons in Daisy Dukes, give them giant sponges, and have them work a car wash fundraiser. Whatever it takes to find enough money to make Spence-Crawford happen.
Nothing else will do and, hopefully, the long, long, long suffering fans make a stand in demanding what they want.
As for the undercard of Saturday’s Showtime PPV card?
Well, it all depends if you’re a glass half-empty or half-full kind of guy.
The jaded cynic in me says that the only real takeaway from Saturday’s PPV undercard show was that Josesito Lopez, Francisco Vargas, and Yuriorkis Gamboa are definitively, positively, absolutely shot, done, finito.
All three of these veterans were dominated by younger, stronger foes on Saturday’s card and all looked fragile as hell in being beaten.
Lopez was beaten via unanimous decision by Canadian Cody Crowley. And, while Crowley has yet to establish his level on the world stage, we got an inkling via some rough patches against a clearly diminished Lopez that, maybe, “The Crippler” won’t be an elite player. Still, Lopez looked stiff-legged and generally all-around shot. Maybe it was the 17-month layoff, but probably not. At 37, Lopez showed every indication of being a fighter who was done.
Former world champ Francisco “El Bandido” Vargas has been in full deterioration for a long while now. He looked stiff in defeat to Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz in June of 2021 and, Saturday, he was knocked stiff in the first round by 22-year-old Jose “El Rayo” Valenzuela. Vargas hasn’t had a significant win since he beat Takashi Miura for the WBC super featherweight title in 2015. At 37, he only exists to be plastered by younger, rising talent now.
And Yuriorkis Gamboa? He had, literally, nothing against Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz. The Cuban’s chin was never the sturdiest, but without legs underneath him or anything behind his punches, he played the part of the mole in an AT&T Stadium Whac-A-Mole game on Saturday. Down 4 times in 5 rounds-- and bothered by pretty much everything that touched him-- the 40-year-old Gamboa had no business being in the ring.
The optimist in me, however, sees two young-20s lightweights in Cruz and Valenzuela tossed into the mix in a division already bursting at the seams with possibility.
The non-PPV undercard on Showtime before the main show saw a WBA cardboard welterweight championship change hands when Lithuania’s Eimantas Stanionis decisioned Russia’s Radzhab Butaev. I was anticipating this to be one of the fights of the evening and it didn’t disappoint. What did disappoint, though, was the fight prior when the always turbo-charged Brandun Lee couldn’t get Zachary “Zungry” Ochoa to stop Zrunning around the Zring to Zengage and had to settle for a one-sided 10-round decision win.
All in all, it was a decent night of boxing, $75 price tag or not. But-- and I can’t stress this often enough or loud enough-- it’s all for shit if we don’t get Spence-Crawford.
Got something for Magno? Send it here: paulmagno@theboxingtribune.com.