Spence vs Crawford match on Saturday: Top 5 facts on upcoming fight

Welterweights Errol Spence Jr. and Terence Crawford are set for a match this July 29 at the T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas. In what is one of the most anticipated matches since Pacquiao vs Mayweather, sport betting analyst ActionNetwork puts the odds in favor of Spence.
Original story by Brian Cambell CBS Boxing

The most prestigious and important boxing match since 2015’s record-breaking clash between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao takes place on Saturday as the sport sets to crown an undisputed welterweight king.

Unified champion Errol Spence Jr. (28-0, 22 KOs) puts his IBF, WBA and WBC belts at stake against WBO champion Terence Crawford (39-0, 30 KOs) when the two meet inside T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas (Showtime PPV, 8 p.m. ET) in a long-awaited superfight presented by Premier Boxing Champions.

Several betting analysts like ActionNetwork, Odds Shark and Forbes have predicted in favor of Spence winning against the welterweight from Omaha, Nebraska.

1. Stakes on stakes: It doesn’t get any bigger than this
Just how big is Spence-Crawford? This pair of unbeaten champions might not be on the same level of global fame as Mayweather and Pacquiao, but the hype surrounding Saturday’s fight has been fueled by a similar five-year build of debates and mythical matchmaking until the business side of things were finally right.

The difference, however, is Spence and Crawford are closer to their actual fighting primes than their welterweight predecessors at ages 33 and 35, respectively.

2. This fight holds up to historical comparisons just fine
While Spence has spent the entirety of his 11-year pro career at 147 pounds, Crawford has steadily moved up in stages while capturing titles in three weight divisions along way (including becoming the first four-belt undisputed champion in junior welterweight history). But it didn’t take long upon Crawford’s arrival on the welterweight scene in 2018 to realize that not only was a clash between the two inevitable, boxing was dealing with a pair of truly all-time great fighters who could’ve succeeded in any era.

Given the hype surrounding this fight, it’s also not out of bounds to put Spence-Crawford in the same lineage of great welterweight unifications over the past half century that became front-page news across all of sports: Ray Leonard-Thomas Hearns (1981), Oscar De La Hoya-Felix Trinidad (1999) and Mayweather-Pacquiao.

The difference between then and now might be that those three fights never produced immediate sequels and only Leonard-Hearns had a rematch at all, which came eight years later and three weight divisions higher (producing a disputed split draw result).

To read the other three analyses of Brian Campbell for CBS Boxing, visit https://www.cbssports.com/boxing/news/naoya-inoue-vs-stephen-fulton-fight-prediction-start-time-odds-undercard-preview-expert-pick