Three years ago, Errol Spence Jr suffered a devastating defeat to Terence Crawford when bidding for the undisputed welterweight crown. Now, former trainer Derrick James has revealed that Spence was carrying an injury ahead of that fight.
Spence lost his undefeated record to Crawford in traumatising style, finding himself on the wrong side of one of the standout performances of this generation, dealt a cruel beatdown to bring his reign atop the 147lb division to a brutal close.
After an extended period away from the sport, Spence is finally set to return to the ring this month, but when reflecting on that fateful night, ‘The Truth’ spoke about a poor training camp and lack of communication with his then trainer James.
“Nope [I had no conversations with James about how to go about the fight]. That camp was bulls**t. I did no sparring. The guys didn’t fit – I had no southpaws in there to spar. It was all out of whack.”
However, speaking on The Last Stand Podcast, James offered his response to those claims, explaining that Spence sparred switch-hitters rather than southpaws and that his sparring was reduced due to a rib injury.
“He had two guys that were switch hitters [as sparring partners], both of them fought left-handed, right-handed, and supposedly one of them injured him.
“I didn’t see when it happened and he didn’t acknowledge that he was injured, but the next following week we sparred, then we took a day off from sparring, then we sparred against on Saturday.
“So, that’s when I realised, they was like ‘hey man, his ribs are hurt,’ I said, ‘listen, you need to go get that looked at, checked out,’ and I guess he did or he didn’t. I don’t know because I didn’t go with him but we just kept working.
“His father said he’s not sparring, that he was going to save it for the fight. His father is the one that said no sparring, and he was complaining about the way the other guys were sparring, so that’s who it was.
“The funny thing about it was, the week of being in Vegas I said that we can spar a little bit but spar with one of your buddies that won’t shoot body shots if you have an injury. And he said ‘No, I’m not doing that, I’m not sparring. No.’ So he wouldn’t even do it then.”
Spence returns to action under the tutelage of Ronnie Shields when he takes on Tim Tsyzu on Sunday, July 26, in Australia, hoping to announce himself as a threat to the super-welterweight world titles and kickstart a charge towards becoming a two-division world champion.
