How good is Errol ?The Truth? Spence Jr.? After Saturday?s bout with Shawn Porter at Staples Center in Los Angeles, we may finally be getting at an answer.
What a bizarre question to ask/answer regarding a fighter who?s been on the world boxing main stage for over three years, a world champion for more than two years, and is currently ranked among the best pound-for-pound best fighters on the planet.
But this is the boxing world of today. Fighters are great before they?re great, world champions before beating their first world class opponent. These days, stars are more often than not reverse-engineered?niche stardom is established and then, little by little, the r?sum? is filled with accomplishments to justify the star treatment. Very seldom anymore does a star literally fight his way to the top.
And Spence has definitely been a product of these times.
With a flimsy r?sum? sporting victories over Chris Algieri and Leonard Bundu as high water-mark achievements, Spence became the no. 1 contender to IBF welterweight champ Kell Brook.
An impressive win over Brook in Brook?s hometown of Sheffield, England justified the Spence hype, but didn?t entirely establish him as ?for real? in the traditional boxing sense. Subsequent title defenses over a faded Lamont Peterson, an overmatched Carlos Ocampo, and what turned out to be a critically undersized Mikey Garcia didn?t do much to nudge him towards that ?for real? status.
Whether the world was running scared or Spence was being guided around the toughest of the tough, the reality was that, for all the hype and the clear thoroughbred prizefighter tools, Spence had yet to face a legitimate elite-level welterweight threat. Criticism and skepticism was starting to spread regarding ?The Truth.?
Only certain fighters get to skate by criticism-free with multiple soft-touch world title defenses. And Spence was no media-friendly, Soviet Bloc-bruiser like Gennady Golovkin, who was being ranked among the all-time middleweight greats by ?serious? boxing journalists before having faced his first legitimate world class challenge. Patience would be short with someone like Spence.
And upon hearing that Spence would be fighting WBC welterweight titlist Shawn Porter in a unification bout, the critics were getting more vocal.
Porter, after all, was ?just? a gatekeeper who had come up short in his big shots against Kell Brook and Keith Thurman and could?ve easily lost to a semi-interested Danny Garcia. Porter was a ?good guy? who everyone respected, but not a great fighter and not someone who Spence should be fighting in place of someone like Terence Crawford (who critics feel Spence may or may not be running from).
As things would turn out, though, Porter WAS an elite-level threat for Spence. He fought his heart out, turning in the best performance of his career and pushing Spence like nobody had pushed him before.
Spence never broke or even bent under the hellacious pressure brought upon him by a mega-bullish, mega-confident Porter. The Desoto, Texas native was as effective, offensively, as humanly possible, executing a high-difficulty offensive assault that, as this writer said elsewhere, ?was a little like trying to hurl a javelin for accuracy into a wild wind storm.?
Through it all, Spence was just a bit better than Porter and good enough, tough enough, smart enough to stay one step ahead of the whirlwind trying to swallow him whole, even managing to drop a raging Porter with a brain-rattling left hand in the eleventh round. Despite the predictable social media griping, there was no controversy when it comes to his split decision win. Spence won honestly and without legitimate controversy.
Following Saturday?s battle, the answer to ?How good is Errol Spence? is significantly clearer. After beating back the challenge of Shawn Porter, who is no worse than no. 4 or no. 5 in the world (but fought like a no. 1 or no. 2 that evening), Spence finally deserves his ranking atop the welterweight division.
By beating Porter, the division?s ultimate lie detector, ?The Truth? has established himself as the truth.
