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Terence Crawford delivered a dominant performance against Errol Spence Jr., securing a ninth-round TKO in their highly anticipated superfight to claim the undisputed welterweight championship at T-Mobile Arena on Saturday night. Crawford knocked Spence down in the second round and twice more in the seventh, putting on a two-handed clinic to take Spence's IBF, WBA, and WBC titles, adding them to his WBO belt. In the ninth round, the 35-year-old Crawford overwhelmed Spence, who was bloodied and swollen, with a barrage of unanswered punches before referee Harvey Dock stopped the fight at 2:32. Although Spence, 33, protested the stoppage, he appeared to lose every round except the first. “Like I said before, I only dreamed of being a world champion,“ said Crawford, ranked ESPN's No. 1 pound-for-pound boxer. “I'm an overachiever. Nobody believed in me when I was coming up, but I made everybody a believer.“ Crawford, now 40-0 with 31 KOs, earned his first world title in 2014 by defeating Ricky Burns in Scotland at 135 pounds. He later became the undisputed champion at 140 pounds and is now the first fighter to claim all four major belts at 147 pounds. “This means everything because of who I took the belts from,“ said Crawford, who entered the ring with music star Eminem and his iconic track “Lose Yourself“ playing. Crawford took control of the fight in Round 2, knocking Spence down for the first time in his career with a body shot followed by a southpaw jab. Afterward, Crawford told ESPN's Stephen A. Smith that after Spence landed a few overhand lefts early on, he thought, “This is it? ... It's going to be a long night for him.“ And it was, though Spence (28-1, 22 KOs) kept pressing forward with his southpaw jab. He was cut over the right eye in Round 3 and struggled to land any meaningful punches for the rest of the fight. Despite being the smaller man, Crawford came in with a perfect knockout record in his seven welterweight bouts and continued that streak in what many consider the biggest fight since Mayweather vs. Pacquiao in 2015. “He was the better man tonight,“ said Spence, ranked ESPN's No. 2 welterweight and No. 4 pound-for-pound boxer. “His jab was sharp, and my timing was off. He was catching me between shots. ... No excuses.“ A rematch clause allows Spence to trigger another fight within 30 days, and he vowed to be “a lot better“ next time. The rematch can take place at 147 or 154 pounds, and Spence expressed a preference for 154. “Hell yeah, we got to do it again,“ Spence said. “I’ll be much better. It’ll be a closer fight. Probably in December because [the rematch must happen] before the end of the year.“ Since Crawford's first fight at 147 pounds in June 2018, when he won the WBO title with a TKO over Jeff Horn, there had been high demand for a showdown with Spence. But years of promoter conflicts delayed the fight. Crawford was with Top Rank, while Spence is aligned with PBC, two companies that rarely collaborate. “They tried to blackball me, kept me out,“ Crawford said. “They talked bad about me, said I wasn’t good enough to beat top welterweights. But I kept faith and waited for my chance to show the world who Terence Crawford is. And tonight, I believe I showed how great I am.“
